The East-West Divide in the European Union: A Development Divide Reframed as a Political One

This chapter focuses on the return of the East-West divide in the European Union, a divide neither new nor superficial. Dating centuries back in history, the divide is fuelled by persistent differences in the level of development of the Old (Western) Member States, and the New (CEE) Member States. Given the major geopolitical shifts shaking the current world order (i.e., the transatlantic deficit), overcoming the East-West divide is crucial for the EU’s future. This chapter will underline the morphology of the East-West “development divide” by focusing on its socio-economic determinants. It seeks to show that CEE membership to the EU has left largely untouched development indicators such as the urban-rural ratio, level of capitalisation and savings, entrepreneurship and innovation, integration in global/European production, technology, R&D chains, minimum wages, social expenditures, poverty, deprivation, income inequality, unemployment, and mortality. The authors consider that a sober, critical evidence-based acknowledgement of the European Union’s failure to make significant contributions to closing this development divide is worth our attention, and that the temptation to “reframe” this development gap in political, cultural, or even civilizational terms has the potential to create the greatest vulnerability for the EU and the international liberal order in the next years.