Eastern Europe: Western Europe pays, the EU commission pays, and the US... rules!

Propaganda has always created its innumerable 'vulgates' primarily by simplification. When one delves deeper into analysis, one discovers that the historical evidence for the falsity of the various 'vulgates' is mostly widely available, but is in fact only analysed by specialists in the field. By the blows of 'vulgates' - one on top of or inside the other, Russian Matryoshka model - one thus ends up losing the thread of absolutely essential issues.

1 May 2004 is the date of the simultaneous entry of 10 countries into the EU: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta and the three Baltics.

A few months earlier, on 29 March 2004, several of these countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the 3 Baltics) had joined NATO, following those (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary) that had already joined in March 1999.

This is an epoch-making change for the functioning of the EU. In the pre-2004 EU, it was enough that two large countries, or one large country and two medium-sized or small ones, disagreed, that the Commission in most cases did not submit or withdrew its proposal.

As of 1 May 2004, the 10 new members, almost all Eastern European countries and NATO members at the same time, definitely shifted the balance in favour of the EU Commission. Via cohesion funds, rural development funds and other EU funding, all Eastern European countries have uninterruptedly received funds amounting to more than 5% of their annual Gross Domestic Product every year since 2004. It is as if Italy had received 100 billion euro (5% of our GDP) every year since 2004.

The funds for this uninterrupted, 20-year-long bonanza - an authentic second Marshall Plan, about which, however, nothing is said - have, since 2004 to date, been paid by the national dues paid by the active contributing countries of the EU, namely, in order: Germany, Great Britain (until Brexit), France, Italy, the Netherlands, etc., i.e. by Western Europe: the same that fully finances all EU institutions.

Such gigantic financing from Western Europe to Eastern Europe should obviously imply some political priority for the Western European countries, as founders of the EU and above all as financiers. In short: they are the ones who founded the shack, and they are the ones who foot the bill.
But this mechanism or natural development is completely blown.

In fact, the moment and the institutional and legal context of the payment of national quotas to the EU Commission by the Western European countries are totally separate from the moment and the institutional and legal context of the payment of these contributions to the Eastern countries.

The disbursement, i.e. the sprinkling of amounts totalling 5% of the recipient country's GDP, is carried out every year by the EU Commission's august bureaucrats.

The predictable result, known to hundreds of officials, obviously including Italians, engaged in various, delicate EU negotiations, has been, quite simply, the systematic tendency of the Eastern countries, since 2004-2005, to vote almost always in favour of the Commission's proposals, and with even rather original attitudes, such as making statements that are often extremely critical of the proposals in the context of the negotiating debate, only to vote in favour. As if the level of statements could be easily separated from the level of voting.

The EU Commission thus became exponentially stronger. Gone were the days when small combinations of countries such as France, Belgium and Denmark, or Italy, Spain and Austria, not to mention Germany and France, could effectively block its measures and impose either their withdrawal or modification.

At the same time, the Eastern countries, secure in the sources of funding that have become automatic, have for a long time maintained an attitude of extreme deference (only) to the EU Commission: the recent, well-known cases of resistance and disagreements with Hungary and Poland are exceptions, not the rule. Understandably so: it is delicate to oppose a body that decides on the sprinkling of contributions equivalent to or greater than 5% of one's GDP.

And so the countries of Western Europe do not in fact exercise any role comparable to that of those in history - Urbe et Orbi - who foot the bill. That role is exercised by the EU Commission.

Propaedeutic and instrumental to the disavowal of this obvious situation is the glossing over by pro-EU propaganda of the epochal dimensions of the transfer of resources from Western Europe to Eastern Europe that has been taking place since 2004. The relevant data are available, but are never mentioned by the 'vulgate'.

Public opinion in our country is one of the first victims of the 'vulgate'. It has been since the 1990s that Italy is the fourth (pre-Brexit) and then the third active contributor to the EU, but the vast majority of Italians do not know this: and this is thanks to the pro-EU propaganda - in Italy mainly of the left.

The famous anti-Covid aid package, hence the PNRR etc., will only put us exceptionally in the black on the EU contribution front for a few years, against an unbroken 30-year deficit.

Italy's contribution to the EU in 2020 was 18 billion, and Italy's share of the cost of the ESM is 14 billion. The famous citizenship income weighed a mere 8.5 billion and the Meloni government's 2022 manoeuvre was a paltry 35 billion. But the majority of Italians think Italy is kept by the EU - the exact opposite of reality.

With the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Eastern countries, Poland and the three Baltics have taken a line of extreme hostility towards Russia, as if they wanted to settle the bitter accounts of the Second World War and Soviet occupation in nationalistic terms. Together with the US Dems and the UK, Poland and the 3 Baltics are trying to extend an extremely hostile front, easily distinguishable from that of Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, and opposed to that of the effectively neutral countries (Croatia and Serbia, and only for some partial outlines, Hungary, Austria, and Switzerland).

The European standard-bearer of this front is Poland, which notoriously, in its national consciousness, believes itself to be one of the pillars of European and Western historical identity. Whether this belief is actually tenable, and to what extent it is shared by other European countries, is, as is well known, a bitter or vexata quaestio, but let us pass over it. The three Baltics, similarly financed by the EU at a rate of more than 5% of annual GDP, have very small demographic and economic dimensions.

Poland has grown exponentially since 2004: its GDP, with 38 million inhabitants, is now a third of Italy's (1); in two decades, Warsaw has built itself a skyline of skyscrapers like an average US city. Poland has also just raised (2) its annual military budget to 3% of GDP (an increase of 50% by 2022).

One wonders: why should Poland continue to receive windfall funds of around 5% of its GDP? It is at least obvious that the EU is also indirectly funding the Polish Armed Forces. The same question, mutatis mutandis, also applies to the other Eastern countries.

The above picture cannot but lead to the pathological inadequacy of the political and governmental class of the countries (Germany, France, Italy, Holland, etc.) that since 2004 have uninterruptedly financed not only the EU institutions, but also the countries of the East: in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Poland and the three Baltics, backed by the USA and the UK, now have an autonomous and divergent line from their own, around which they are trying to coalesce other countries (Bulgaria and Romania above all), always - it is worth repeating - financed by them.

The US is not paying, but it is nevertheless exercising a growing political role with the countries of the East, as attested by the very recent Biden summit (Warsaw, 21 February 2023) with the countries of the so-called 'Bucharest Nine' - as they call them in the US - i.e. the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the three Baltics.

The signal is visible to a blind man, but our august press is silent about it: what is the logic and scope of a meeting limited to Eastern countries and the USA, i.e. excluding Western European countries? What would Eastern European countries with the US have to deal with each other more easily, without the Western European countries? Note that within the countries of Eastern Europe, the only sign of partial divergence from this approach came, more usually, from Hungarian President Orban who - Biden or no Biden - sent his deputy to Warsaw.

Congratulations, Scholz, Macron, Draghi, Rutte - not to mention the latest arrivals, Giorgia and Guido! Full steam ahead!

After having tolerated without reacting: an EU Commission occupied by the USA, a Commission President who continually makes warmongering statements without any mandate, Ukrainian President Zelensky's attempt to trigger the NATO-Russia war by launching a missile in Poland and falsely accusing Russia, the terrorist sabotage of the North Stream pipeline, the crippling of the European economy by sanctions, what did you expect? A strengthening of your institutional and political role?

Here they are, the results: more and more bypassed by the US, which increasingly rules, in the EU Commission and in Eastern Europe. We, the countries of Western Europe, simply continue to foot the bill. In every sense.

Notes

(1) Poland Gross National Product (GNP) | Economic Indicators | CEIC (ceicdata.com)
(2) Poland to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP from 2023 (janes.com)

Published in ComeDonChisciotte