Why does eastern europe have higher

On the one hand, this has provided opportunities and experiences that were unimaginable to the previous generation who were stuck behind the Iron Curtain, but it has also combined with declining birth rates and a fear of immigration to contribute to shrinking societies.

Latvia has lost more than a quarter of its population, Bulgaria and Romania around a fifth. With higher salaries a short and easy flight away, the process was inevitable. In parts of the region, this has led to chronic shortages of doctors and other skilled workers. In the long run, if the countries of central and eastern Europe can continue to catch up with the west, many of the emigres will be drawn back. With Brexit stalking the UK, there are already anecdotal signs of an incipient return.

There are flights from London and other western European hubs to dozens of cities in the region, often cheaply. As the economic gap between the east and the west of the continent continues to narrow, it is possible that many of these people will eventually return to their home countries, bringing with them money, skills and networks developed during their time abroad.

But he is still respected for his role in bringing the country out of communism. However, looking back at the economic transition, famously compared by him and others to turning fish soup back into an aquarium, the year-old feels there are plenty of reasons to look positively on the past three decades.

What else should we cover? Email us at theupside theguardian. From Solidarity to prosperity Quick Guide What is the Upside? Show Ever wondered why you feel so gloomy about the world - even at a time when humanity has never been this healthy and prosperous? But in Japan formalised a third pillar. This was essentially a burden-sharing exercise, whereby Tokyo sought to uphold the US agenda in other regions of the world. Tokyo anticipated such a process in the region to be a long-term endeavour.

The formalisation of the third pillar did not mean that Japan had traditionally been absent from the region. Since the s Japan has been providing technical assistance and financial aid across this large geographical area.

More precisely, the concept unveiled how Japan intends to relate to various regional groupings that have emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This indicates that, as a rule, when Tokyo seeks to deepen relations in Eurasia it prefers to engage with a set of states grouped around a sub-regional organisation. The second issue that is of concern to the Japanese relates to transfers of military technology and equipment from Eastern Europe to China, which risk upsetting the power balance in Asia and precipitating a military clash.

Ukraine, with its vast military-industrial complex developed during Soviet times, poses a particular challenge in this regard. Back in a private company in Macau procured the unfinished Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag from Ukraine on the pretext that it would be refurbished as a floating casino.

As Ukraine moved in to cease cooperation with Russia in the military-industrial sector, the risks of such transfers increased. Without Russia as a traditional customer, some cash-strapped Ukrainian defence companies were looking for alternative solutions, including in China. And Beijing was happy to step in and take advantage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The plans foresaw jointly building a factory in China and bringing in Ukrainian engineers.

It remains quite important in the mid- and long-term perspective for Japan to prevent any leakage of military or other crucial technologies to China from economically vulnerable Ukraine and other EaP countries e. Belarus , which could have an adverse impact on the security situation in and around Japan.

On the one hand, it is critically important for Tokyo to continue winning political and diplomatic support in international fora worldwide, Eastern Europe included, in its efforts to raise the costs for North Korea. There is in fact little incentive for North Korea to accept denuclearisation in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea.

The lesson probably drawn in Pyongyang is that nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantee against attempts by rivals to orchestrate a regime change. This puts Japan in a difficult diplomatic position. Although Japan joined the chorus of international condemnation following the annexation of Crimea, the Russian factor imposes certain constraints on Tokyo.

On the one hand, this was a clear case of change of status quo by force, which Japan has condemned. On the other hand, Shinzo Abe remained committed to his goal of engaging the Russian leadership to push negotiations on the disputed islands forward.

As Russia moved even closer to China after , Japan also sought, if not to obstruct, then to actively discourage this Sino-Russian rapprochement.

The varying levels of enthusiasm for democracy and free markets may be driven in part by different perspectives about the degree to which societies have made progress over the past three decades.

Most Poles, Czechs and Lithuanians, and more than four-in-ten Hungarians and Slovaks, believe the economic situation for most people in their country today is better than it was under communism.

And in these five nations, people are more likely to hold this view now than was the case in , when Europe was struggling with the effects of the global financial crisis. However, in Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria, more than half currently say things are worse for most people now than during the communist era. When asked whether their countries have made progress over the past three decades across a range of issues, the Central and Eastern European publics surveyed feel most positive about issues like education and living standards.

But opinions are more divided about progress on law and order and family values, and most say the changes have had a negative impact on health care. There is widespread agreement that elites have gained more from the enormous changes of the past 30 years than average citizens have. Large majorities in all Central and Eastern European nations polled think politicians and business leaders have benefited, but fewer say this about ordinary people.

Just as there are different views about the progress nations have made in the recent past, opinions differ about the future as well. Across Europe, attitudes on some topics reflect a sharp East-West divide. On social issues like homosexuality and the role of women in society, opinions differ sharply between West and East, with Western Europeans expressing much more progressive attitudes.

There is also a divide on views about the economic future. Regarding the economic prospects for the next generation, hope is somewhat more common in former Eastern Bloc nations. Around six-in-ten Ukrainians, Poles and Lithuanians believe that when children in their country grow up, they will be financially better off than their parents.

On views about the state of the current economy, however, the main division is often between a relatively satisfied northern Europe and a mostly unhappy south, where many people have not recovered from the economic crisis of a decade ago. EU member states are mostly united in their support for the broad European project.

The EU gets largely favorable ratings, most say membership has been good for their countries, and most believe their countries have benefited economically from being a part of the EU, although positive reviews for the institution are hardly universal.

The most favorable ratings for the EU are found in former communist nations Poland and Lithuania, both of which became member states in As previous Pew Research Center studies have shown, Europeans tend to believe in the ideals of the EU, but they have complaints about how it functions.

Most have said the EU stands for peace, democracy and prosperity, but most also believe it is intrusive and inefficient and that Brussels does not understand the needs of average citizens. The two former communist nations in the survey that have not joined the EU — Russia and Ukraine, both of which were part of the Soviet Union — look very different from the EU nations surveyed on a number of measures.

They are less approving of the shifts to democracy and capitalism, less supportive of specific democratic principles and less satisfied with their lives. The survey covers a broad array of topics, including views about the transition to multiparty politics and free markets, democratic values, the EU, Germany, political leaders, life satisfaction, economic conditions, gender equality, minority groups and political parties.

The survey was conducted among 18, people from May 13 to Aug. This study builds upon two previous surveys by Pew Research Center and its predecessor. The second was a poll conducted by Pew Research Center from Aug. The survey took place prior to the dissolution of both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Even though Czechoslovakia was a single country in , we show results for geographic areas that correspond to the present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia. In Ukraine in , we do not survey in Crimea or areas under conflict in the eastern oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk.

For more information, see the Methodology. Across all 14 EU countries included in the study, as well Russia, Ukraine and the United States, there is broad support for specific democratic rights and institutions.

Respondents were presented with nine different features of liberal democracy, then asked how important it is to have each one in their country. Majorities in every nation polled said all of these nine factors are at least somewhat important, and in most countries, large majorities expressed this view.

And this demographic angst opens up opportunities for politicians to present the specter of mass immigration of Middle Eastern and African people as an existential threat to the nation. It is therefore unsurprising that the response in the CEE countries to the great influx of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa in — was quite restrictive. While Germany, Sweden, and some other Western European countries opened their borders, CEE countries tended to close theirs or—when the refugees had already arrived—encourage them to move on to other states as rapidly as possible.

Some CEE countries also became prominent opponents of any proposal to distribute the burden of hosting refugees more equally among member states. The EU Council decision in to introduce obligatory quotas of migrants for each state backfired, as it just aggravated the ill feelings about the issue. Certainly, a number of Western European countries also disliked schemes for redistributing refugees and some Eastern governments signaled a willingness to compromise.

In the last three years, the situation has changed. As Western European states have also adopted much more restrictive policies and the number of new arrivals has diminished, the difference between East and West is now much smaller than it used to be.

The reluctance to give up national sovereignty to develop stronger EU structures and policies is widely shared today. And more modest reforms are impeded not by the East-West divide but by the positions of individual populist leaders who prefer to exploit the issue for domestic purposes rather than solve it.

The third myth is that the CEE countries suffer from endemic rule-of-law deficits that threaten the functioning of the union. Essentially, there are two types of problem. For the most part, issues result from weaknesses in governance that in some cases go back several centuries. Where no effective state institutions existed throughout much of history, as in many parts of the highly decentralized Ottoman Empire, it will take considerable time to create the required institutional capacity.

Similar problems in southern Italy or Greece show that such challenges are not unique to CEE countries. But for them, the legacy of four decades of Communism is certainly an additional handicap. It was overoptimistic to assume that the EU accession process would remedy these deficits within a few years.

But in fact, some CEE countries such as those in the Baltics and, initially, Poland have made rapid progress, whereas others are lagging behind. Weak judiciaries and high levels of corruption are certainly problematic for the EU, not least because most of these countries receive a lot of EU aid.

But there is hope that over time, the situation will improve as it has in other CEE countries. The real challenge for the EU is to develop incentives to support this process and sharpen the instruments to combat fraud and corruption. Much more serious are situations when the problem is not the legacy of weak state structures but the conscious effort of a governing party to entrench its rule by dismantling constitutional checks and balances, curbing the independence of the judiciary, and reducing the space of independent media and civil society.

Hungary and Poland are currently drifting in this direction. To a more limited extent, this is also true for Romania, where the ruling party is trying to roll back the anticorruption reforms of earlier years. Such behavior creates serious problems for the EU, particularly as it so far lacks effective remedies to deal with such situations. Nothing has tarnished the image of the CEE as much as these developments.

However, there is no justification to conflate the behavior of a few governments with the democratic and rule-of-law standards of the CEE countries as a group. But despite all this evidence that the integration of the CEE countries into the EU has been remarkably successful, many observers still note a distinctly different approach to the EU in the post-Communist states.

Certainly, the rationale of integration in the s, focused on locking France and Germany into a common framework that would make a new war impossible, was alien to countries that at the time experienced forced integration into the Soviet empire.

But they were hardly motivated by any federalist philosophy of overcoming the nation-state by sharing sovereignty at the EU level. As Krastev and Holmes have shown, joining Western institutions was primarily perceived as a return to normality and as the pathway to security, prosperity, and freedom. Until recently, it was hard to see the CEE countries as a major obstacle to deepened integration.