'The Future that Once Was: 1989, the EU's Eastward enlargement and democracy's missed chances'

The nineties were at the root of a lingering ‘democratic deficit’, whose amplified effects we still experience today. How did the modalities of implementing the Community’s Eastward enlargement during the nineties generate this deficit? This chapter examines the decade of the nineties as a bridge between two eras, more than the new beginning it appeared to be. I posit that the end of the Cold War represented a missed chance, particularly for the European Commission (EC) but also for the European Union (EU) institutional structure as a whole. For this reason, this chapter will focuson the ‘EU Communication Strategy on Enlargement’ and on the ensuing ‘discursive wall’ between EU citizens and institutions. Indeed, the 'roads not taken' concerning the decision of the EU’s Eastward enlargement had a long-lasting influence on the unfolding of phenomena such as ‘enlargement fatigue’[1]—and even of 'integration fatigue'[2]. They developed in parallel to the so-called EU’s democratic deficit.

This chapter will emphasize the notorious semantic charge of such communication strategies. Their power and influence was no less significant than hard power identity-building and boundary-making devices. I will focus on processes in which the European Commission configured and selected particularly charged discursive utterances. These were related to ways of interpreting and diffusing meanings of ‘1989’ to re-connect with citizens and to gain their approval to move forward with the EU’s Eastward enlargement process. Indeed, this management of public perceptions for outreach and political legitimization purposes via the EU's Communication Strategy on Enlargement acted increasingly as a metaphorical 'wall' between citizens and institutions. This communicative barrier mitigated citizens’ engagement with the consolidation of the so-called 'reunification of Europe' after the 1989 turning point. I postulate that this discursive 'wall' was a lost opportunity to overcome the EU's democratic deficit and to actually implement the EU's full commitment to the principles of solidarity, cohesion and peace.

Enlargement policy constituted a fundamental historical turning point and a geopolitical game-changer in the European integration process. Certainly, this EU policy directly touches upon the key issue of the ‘final frontiers’ of the European integration process. In this respect, it offers insights about the evolving historical meanings of key concepts such as Community membership and the memory of belonging to a common polity. Enlargement policy was also a catalyst of structural change in the post-1989 period; it triggered new configurations of power balances within the European Community/EU institutions, new bargaining cooperation schemes and new agenda-setting priorities, including a willing redress of neighbourhood policy orientations towards dialogue, diplomacy and cross-border positive socioeconomic interdependences. These were the open chances in 1989. However, the present offers a picture dominated by instrumental frontiers of inclusion and exclusion; a proliferation of backsliding phenomena in the East of the continent and the cooption of democratic principles to disrupt the so-called ‘European social model’ in the West. For this reason, the EU’s Eastward enlargement case study helps to shed light on an East-West conversation that the policy-making actors of the time neglected to unfold, and which damaged changing—and creatively diverse— proposals of democratic political culture coming from both sides of the continent.