Europe lacks a centre. Let us be the ones to become the new Central Europe
Europe seems to have no centre. Note that Germany is the West, Austria is the West and then, within a few metres of the borders with the Czech Republic, Poland or Slovakia, the East comes straight in.
Once upon a time (yes, thirty-three years ago is a long time ago) there was an Iron Curtain running through here, separating East and West quite sharply. Different culture (Slavic-Soviet), different politics (totalitarian communism), different economy (planned)... We were de facto enemies. There was no point in talking about a Central Europe, because Europe was more and more a Western Europe. After all, one of the slogans of the revolutions in the late 1980s and early 1990s here in the East was "Back to Europe", meaning Western Europe.
Even long after the fall of the Iron Curtain, which divided us for forty years, the differences were evident. We were mainly poor, we didn't have much capital or many capitalists here. There was corruption, and both the Czechs and the Poles were rather infamous. Our political and economic problems were specific to our region: the transformation of the economy, privatisation, recapitalisation of the economy, the relaxation of the fixed exchange rate of the crown, the introduction of new taxes, reforms of the civil service, reforms in many areas of social life, joining the EU and introducing European legislation, and so on. We had a long way to go.
Today, the situation is different; our problems are more or less the standard problems of Western countries. Our shops sell more or less the same goods as in the West. Our country is economically open, the redirection of foreign trade from Eastern markets to Western markets has worked out well. You could even say that we, as Central Europe, have not been troublemakers for the last two decades (with some exceptions like the behaviour during the migration crisis). We don't have high levels of national debt, we are still relatively very well off compared to the West, our levels of corruption are not as scary as they once were, Czechs go on holidays to the West without having to lug tons of their own food with them. Europe is no longer dealing with the expansion of the EU to include our countries and the integration of our economy into the normal course of business with the rest of Europe, that task is already behind us. Prague is a city full of visitors from all over the world, and a significant cohort of foreign expats live here quite normally.
One could even say that the Central European region is building its self-confidence. In particular, our swift and correct response to Russian aggression was exemplary, and many Western leaders have followed in our footsteps. We stood up quite proudly to both China and Russia - and that was long before the Russian invasion a year and a half ago. We visit Taiwan as we please, not China. We have expelled Russian spies without scruples. We dismantled the old Soviet statues despite Russian threats and were classified as enemies of the Russian homeland long before Russia showed its true hateful light. Indeed, Western countries could take a cue from our courageous stand against totalitarianism - despite our previous presidents - and draw courage from us. In purchasing power parity in GDP per capita, our economy has overtaken even countries like Japan and Israel, and we are now overtaking Italy . And we are only a few percent away from the European Union average in this indicator.
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Last but not least, our politics are beginning to look to the world. The current government and president are not making a good day of the EU and good manners and are capable of being respected European politicians. It is actually respectable that a government led by the ODS, once such a Eurosceptic party, has put together a successful presidency and we as a country have stopped sulking and pretending that we are in the EU by mistake.
It should be in the interest of the current government and of President Petr Pavel to start really building the idea of Central Europe, the notoriously absent Mitteleuropa. To give Europe a centre. Our region has shown that it can be a model and that it can lead, not just draw funds and scold and frown under its beard. Of course, these things take years, decades, maybe even a generation or two. But we have had over thirty-three years of freedom and it is time to stop looking derailed in the centre of Europe.
Europe needs central Europe. I think we would all feel much better if we were thought of as central Europe, not eastern Europe. The term eastern Europe should be saved for countries in the real east of Europe. Eastern Europe could include countries that are in Europe but not in the EU. They do indeed still have other peculiar problems - countries like Ukraine, Belarus and, after all, the capital of Russia are in Eastern Europe. We should do everything we can to become central Europe, because Europe lacks such a centre, and so do we.