EU, Please, Colonize Us!
Editorial |Author: Ivan Dikov | May 21, 2008, Wednesday // 00:00| views
Photo by Nadya Kotseva (Sofia Photo Agency)
In the view of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht corruption was a positive social phenomenon as it allowed the poor and the downtrodden to go round the laws crafted by the powerful and the wealthy.
Bulgaria's historical experience does prove this claim - the main way Bulgarians managed to build churches and schools in the Ottoman Empire was by collecting enough money to bribe the Ottoman officials.
Yet, Brecht's claim clearly loses ground in 21st-century EU. As one of the main goals of the EU is to foster social cohesion and balanced regional development, corruption is a curse making the rich richer and those in power more powerful, while shattering the prospects of the middle class, and marginalizing further the lower classes.
One German newspaper recently wrote no other EU member state had ever violated the Union rules so much as Bulgaria has with its 1,5-year performance as a member already raising gravest concerns in Brussels.
Bulgaria is now truly the most problematic state for the EU but not in a way other states have been in the past, i.e. by stubbornly defending their national interests and blocking the work of the Union institutions.
Instead, Bulgaria is rather easy-going in that respect - always ready to do whatever Brussels asks for except in one instance: it is only problematic when it comes to using the money of the good people of the EU for the badly needed infrastructure and development measures. Those in power prefer using it to fill their pockets and bank accounts...
The EU institutions have been repeatedly trying to threaten those in power in Bulgaria in order to force then to tackle corruption. As if corruption was some external phenomenon these guys had nothing do with...
I am perplexed - how can corrupt guys be expected to combat corruption? At best, they might combat some corruption practices and favor others, which are most favorable to them...
While the global trends are leading to increased social polarization, in Western European states the civil society is still usually powerful enough to hinder any overt large-scale abuses of power. Not that there is no corruption in the EU but the situation is always under control - at one instance even the whole European Commission resigned over doubts of malfeasance (1999).
In Bulgaria, however, where collective action problems are way more exacerbated, this is not the case. I have taken part in some civil society initiatives, and learnt it is forbiddingly hard to organize people to fight the combination of inveterate criminals, corrupt officials, wealthy oligarchs, and magistrates who forgot the difference between justice and injustice long ago...
It seems the only possible way countries like Bulgaria could be fixed is by some new kind of colonialism on part of western (and even eastern) EU states. It is rather sad but how else could the grave issues in states with a weak framework of legal rules and societal values be rectified? Bulgaria's objective reality is this: a push by Brussels (or by Washington for that matter), or nothing...
For this reason, when you think about it, colonialism seems to have a positive meaning today - if it was still considered bad why aren't places like French Guyana and Puerto Rico seeking independence? Why are immigrants from the former and now free colonies flocking to their former colonizers?
Colonization is certainly not the right term in Bulgaria's case though. What I mean is something else - a new type of authority for EU institutions including the right to interfere in the internal affairs of member states like Bulgaria, which are plagued with rampant corruption and organized crime and whose societies are too weak to respond to these challenges.
Whether such an overarching supranational authority for Brussels would the beginning of a new superstate? Maybe, or maybe not. But for the good people of Bulgaria and a number of other societies to the east waiting in the EU line, this seems to be the only hope...
If anyone doubts it - the EU did make the right choice by admitting Bulgaria and Romania when they were not completely ready just because if it had not, they might have never become readier. If it hadn't, God knows what might have followed - the Yugoslavian scenario with ethnic violence, a tightened grip of the Russian-Ukrainian+local oligarchy, the creation of banana-type republics...
Actually, when you think of it, Bulgaria is not that far yet from all these developments. But, however corrupt, now in the EU, it finally faces prospects for good future for the first time after 1913. Maybe it all depends not that much on Bulgaria but on the direction in which the EU is going to evolve...
Bulgaria's historical experience does prove this claim - the main way Bulgarians managed to build churches and schools in the Ottoman Empire was by collecting enough money to bribe the Ottoman officials.
Yet, Brecht's claim clearly loses ground in 21st-century EU. As one of the main goals of the EU is to foster social cohesion and balanced regional development, corruption is a curse making the rich richer and those in power more powerful, while shattering the prospects of the middle class, and marginalizing further the lower classes.
One German newspaper recently wrote no other EU member state had ever violated the Union rules so much as Bulgaria has with its 1,5-year performance as a member already raising gravest concerns in Brussels.
Bulgaria is now truly the most problematic state for the EU but not in a way other states have been in the past, i.e. by stubbornly defending their national interests and blocking the work of the Union institutions.
Instead, Bulgaria is rather easy-going in that respect - always ready to do whatever Brussels asks for except in one instance: it is only problematic when it comes to using the money of the good people of the EU for the badly needed infrastructure and development measures. Those in power prefer using it to fill their pockets and bank accounts...
The EU institutions have been repeatedly trying to threaten those in power in Bulgaria in order to force then to tackle corruption. As if corruption was some external phenomenon these guys had nothing do with...
I am perplexed - how can corrupt guys be expected to combat corruption? At best, they might combat some corruption practices and favor others, which are most favorable to them...
While the global trends are leading to increased social polarization, in Western European states the civil society is still usually powerful enough to hinder any overt large-scale abuses of power. Not that there is no corruption in the EU but the situation is always under control - at one instance even the whole European Commission resigned over doubts of malfeasance (1999).
In Bulgaria, however, where collective action problems are way more exacerbated, this is not the case. I have taken part in some civil society initiatives, and learnt it is forbiddingly hard to organize people to fight the combination of inveterate criminals, corrupt officials, wealthy oligarchs, and magistrates who forgot the difference between justice and injustice long ago...
It seems the only possible way countries like Bulgaria could be fixed is by some new kind of colonialism on part of western (and even eastern) EU states. It is rather sad but how else could the grave issues in states with a weak framework of legal rules and societal values be rectified? Bulgaria's objective reality is this: a push by Brussels (or by Washington for that matter), or nothing...
For this reason, when you think about it, colonialism seems to have a positive meaning today - if it was still considered bad why aren't places like French Guyana and Puerto Rico seeking independence? Why are immigrants from the former and now free colonies flocking to their former colonizers?
Colonization is certainly not the right term in Bulgaria's case though. What I mean is something else - a new type of authority for EU institutions including the right to interfere in the internal affairs of member states like Bulgaria, which are plagued with rampant corruption and organized crime and whose societies are too weak to respond to these challenges.
Whether such an overarching supranational authority for Brussels would the beginning of a new superstate? Maybe, or maybe not. But for the good people of Bulgaria and a number of other societies to the east waiting in the EU line, this seems to be the only hope...
If anyone doubts it - the EU did make the right choice by admitting Bulgaria and Romania when they were not completely ready just because if it had not, they might have never become readier. If it hadn't, God knows what might have followed - the Yugoslavian scenario with ethnic violence, a tightened grip of the Russian-Ukrainian+local oligarchy, the creation of banana-type republics...
Actually, when you think of it, Bulgaria is not that far yet from all these developments. But, however corrupt, now in the EU, it finally faces prospects for good future for the first time after 1913. Maybe it all depends not that much on Bulgaria but on the direction in which the EU is going to evolve...
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