The Threat Of Illiberalism In Central Europe

According to a recent report from Freedom House, the populist tide is rising in Central and Eastern Europe. Several EU member states have also seen their democracy scores decrease and that list includes Poland and Hungary. This year, Poland recorded the largest category declines and the second-largest Democracy Score decline in the history of the study. Among the reasons for this are the government’s takeover of the judicial system, the politicization of public media, and aggressive campaigns against NGOs. Also, Hungary has registered the largest cumulative decline in Nations in Transit history.

While I was reading the report, this feature written by Tony Barber for The World Today came to my mind. He is the Europe Editor of the Financial Times and talks from his own experience, having worked as a foreign correspondent in Poland, Hungary and Serbia. He recalls, among other things, the time when, in 1989 Poles peacefully dismantled the communist system that had blighted their country since the end of the Second World War, and now he fears all of these achievements might be destroyed by the poison of populism.

“Today, almost 30 years after the mostly peaceful anti-communist revolutions in east-central Europe, there is anxiety that much of the democratic progress achieved since 1989 is being rolled back (...) Poland and Hungary, under the respective control of the conservative nationalists Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Viktor Orban, are the subject of particular concern. But the sense that all is not well in the region extends to Bulgaria, Romania and other countries, including the independent states that emerged from the former Yugoslavia.”

As the author emphasizes, the EU and other allies such as the US need to be more determined in confronting this threat, not only with fines, but exposing the deficiencies, corruption, inequality, and hypocrisy that sustain populism in power.