Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

If Hungary, or Slovakia or Lithuania—much less Poland, with its 38 million inhabitants—were admitted to the Union on the same terms as its present members the cost in subsidies, regional assistance, infrastructure grants and other transfers would surely break the EU budget. In December 1994 the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany published a study suggesting that if the six countries of Central Europe then seeking entry (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria) were admitted on the same terms as existing members, the cost in structural funds alone would exceed thirty billion Deutschmarks a year. This, it was widely feared, could provoke a backlash in the electorates of the countries paying most of the Union’s bills and who would surely have to be asked to contribute even more: the Netherlands and Britain but especially, and more ominously, Germany. In any case, the recipient countries in the East were in no position to put up even the minimum matching funds required under existing EU regulations. What post-Communist Europe really needed was a Marshall Plan, but no-one was offering it.