Central Europe Goes West

Not all of Central Europe is a winner, just as not all of Eastern Europe is a loser. But a brief comparison between Brno, the second city of the Czech Repub­lic, and Constanta, the second city of Romania, gives an idea of the growing gap between the two.

The average wage in Brno will be $400 a month in 2003 and rising; in Constanta it is $60 and flat. Brno's gothic cathedral is being restored, its delicate baroque squares slowly rebuilt. The Roman ruins, Ottoman mosques and functionalist 1920s villas of Constanta, by contrast, are rat-infested and rotting away. Brno is ringed with new motorways, speeding locals on to their summer cottages or nearby Vienna. It is not rich but neither is it evidently poor. Its hospitals are the equal of those in the European Union; its schools often better. Constanta, it is true, has the odd innovation. Its port, stretching far out into the listless Black Sea, is busy and orderly enough. There are mobile-phone shops on the main street and farther out the odd supermarket and car dealership. But one would not want to get ill here or, in the twilight, nav­igate around the wild dogs who skitter along its streets.

This is only a reflection of larger geopolitical realities. Brno will be inside the EU by 2005. Constanta will not make it until 2009, at the earliest. But the late-comers, Romania and neighboring Bulgaria, will at least have some cause for cheer in 2003: cozy relations with Amer­ica and membership of NATO. Both like to say they joined NATO on 11 September 2001. Certainly, they have given unflagging support to Washington in the war against ter­rorism since then. The alliance will welcome them war­ily, creating firewalls on matters of intelligence and arms contracts. Exports from both countries, particularly Ro­manian Dacia cars, will do better in 2003. Opaque deals with the Middle East will also bring in hard cash. But it will not be enough to keep the best and brightest of Constanta and other cities from heading west.

2003 will be another tough year for Poland, the lum­bering giant of Central Europe. The ex-communist gov­ernment of Leszek Miller will fudge on everything except EU entry. It will speak dearly and passionately to that, not least because Miller has staked his political life on winning a Yes vote in a referendum on membership in 2003. Poland will sign off on very unfavorable terms of entry; the agreements on farming and free movement of people will be derided at home. But Miller will get his Yes vote, just, helped over the top by a dear endorsement from Pope John Paul II and tireless campaigning from Poland's President, Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Watch out for tiny Slovenia, Italy's neighbor on the Adriatic coast and the first bit of the old Yugoslavia to be independent. It is fitting into the Western Europe model with such ease, it is hard to believe it spent a generation under the heel of communism.