Interpreting central and eastern Europe to western Europeans is a necessary but difficult or even thankless task during Russia’s imperial assertiveness in the Ukraine war.
The Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev is one of the best-known writers on these matters. During a recent visit to Dublin, he spoke about them in the context of the Ukraine war, European and US elections.
Alongside the European voting looms the US presidential election. Krastev says the precise outcome of the likely rightward swing in the European voting away from centrist currents will be swayed by whether Trump or Biden wins. A key player to watch is Giorgia Meloni in Italy, whose Brothers of Italy party is a member of the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists Party.
These were joined by the first such post-imperial-colonial entities when Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, followed by Greece in 1981, Finland in 1995 and only later in the large 2004 enlargement which brought in Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007 and Croatia in 2013.