The fiasco of the European Union’s summit in Brussels has brought into sharp relief differences in attitudes between most new member countries from East Central Europe and the “old” members. Perhaps surprisingly for many, such differences were not played out according to the expected script, in which the new members would be ruthlessly pragmatic, and demanding as much EU money as they could get, while most Western countries would in the end tone down their national egoism in favor of the decades-old ideals of European integration.
The fiasco of the European Union’s summit in Brussels has brought into sharp relief differences in attitudes between most new member countries from East Central Europe and the “old” members. Perhaps surprisingly for many, such differences were not played out according to the expected script, in which the new members would be ruthlessly pragmatic, and demanding as much EU money as they could get, while most Western countries would in the end tone down their national egoism in favor of the decades-old ideals of European integration.