SUMMARY: According to the author, it is essential that Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia join immediately the E.E.C. in order to solve the dramatic economic problems facing these countries. It is in the interest of the European Community to prevent the economic crisis from feeding the explosion of nationalistic trends.

(The New Federalist, May 1990)

40% inflation, exponential growth unemployment, more than 20% of the population under the threshold of poverty, a foreign debt among the highest in Central and Eastern Europe, the unrestrained penetration of foreign capitals, hundreds of companies destined to disappear, trade unions heirs to the ancient regime ready to play their card of demagogy, the non-existence of new trade unions in those sectors with higher risks, the burning issue of nationality....

Enough to predict a "hot' summer. And that's precisely what an ever increasing number of Hungarian commentators have been doing. Evidently, not enough of them to cause the the European Community to conceive of another type of relationship with Hungary different from the traditional one of cooperation or assistance. And the fact that the different agreements governing these relations are gathered under a single "hat" pompously renamed '"super-association agreement', in no way changes its true nature and its deeply inadequate character.

Because in whatever way you look at the problem, the issue is always the same. Is a national path to political, economic, social and ecological restructuring a possible option for Hungary today? In other words, can this country approach --at a national level, with the instruments of a nation-- problems which for their magnitude and seriousness can only be compared to those of a country coming out of a war? Can one reasonably expect this of Hungary today, when countries like France, Germany, Italy have been ruined by this approach for thirty years?

Upon closer inspection , the logic that one demands of Hungary, as well as of other Central and Eastern European countries, is exactly the opposite of the one used in arguing with Mrs. Thatcher. They are being told that they will ultimately be able to join the European Community once they solve their problems. That's exactly what Mrs. Thatcher says when she argues, for example, that Great Britain will be able to join the European monetary system only once its inflation problems are solved.

There is no room for illusions. By doing this, Hungary is condemned to pass through an alternative stage, i.e., the one that was at the heart of the recent electoral debate. Either it opts for the strong medicine of the Free Democrats and opens up all its borders to big multinational capital. In that case, we will witness a process of unrestrained international privatization of competing economic structures and the forced socialization of all those that are "depassÅ". The State is not capable of financing such socialization. Or it could choose the "soft' treatment of Democratic Forum. In that case it perhaps will be able to contain, for a time, the restructuring process within socially acceptable limits, but it will not be able to benefit from the "whip" of strong foreign investment to launch its economy .

This equation has no solution within a national context, but the situation would be completely different in the context of the European Community. Such context could actually provide room for the gradual opening to the laws of the world market, it could provide a mechanism to regulate the restructuring process. The authority, the skills, the ambitions and the experience acquired when Spain and Portugal joined, make the European Community the only institution capable today of determining and enforcing the set of temporary rules and regulations which would allow Hungary to adapt in a non traumatic way to the laws of free competition. This would also strengthen its new democratic institutions.

But the EEC can be more than this. In a region where liberation from totalitarianism does not, unfortunately, mean only the return of democracy but the reappearing of the old demons of nationalism as well, the EEC could represent the new model of coexistence among peoples. In the concrete case of Hungary, its joining the EEC would have the immediate, automatic effect of transforming Hungarian minorities from Transylvania, Banat, or Slovakia into minorities of the whole Community. One can easily guess what this could represent in terms of respecting and guaranteeing their rights.

One could answer -- and it has already been answered, as this is the official position of the European Community-- that new countries joining would only have the effect of complicating and, therefore, putting a brake on the process leading to a European federation. We have heard this song before. Those who remember the time when Spain joined, will also remember the endless fears that were expressed. But, in reality, things turned out quite differently. As Felipe Gonzale stated, Spain joining the EEC certainly did create new problems for the Community, but " if you put on one side of the scale the problems and on the other the energies unleashed by the joining, it is clear that Spain's joining was beneficial". The same song was heard, just a few months ago, about Eastern Germany possibly joining. Today, only one country --certainly not just any country-- declares itself ready to bear its cost alone. When there is a political will...

Hungary and its "Habsburg" neighbors, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia (Austria isnot even worth mentioning) have, in total, a smaller population than the Iberian peninsula. The average standard of living is comparable to that of Spain ten years ago. Like in the case of yesterday's Spain, there are many reasons to believe in the existence of a great deal of energy, potential for innovation and creativity. As far as the European Community itself, who could argue against its being stronger, its having more tools today than it did the last time new countries joined?

But among all possible arguments in favor of these countries immediately joining, there is one that prevails over the others. That of the political responsibility of the European Community not only towards Eastern and Central European countries, but also towards the whole European continent, and therefore, finally, towards itself.

The favorable situation experienced for forty years by Western Europe, which has allowed it, among other things, to create this sketchy federal integration, actually gives it much more substantial obligations toward these European countries that today are rejoining democracy than vague plans for European confederation or a re-founding of CSCE. Not to mention the less vague, but just as inadequate, plans for joining the Council of Europe or the "super-association- of the European Community.

These three countries are each experiencing potentially explosive ethnic situations, either internally or externally, as well as particularly difficult economic and social situations. But they have, in one way or another, contributed to the resistance against totalitarianism to a much greater degree than us. Thus, they could potentially contribute energy, courage and political imagination to the process of building Europe, which falls prey to endless bickering and bartering about sovereignty.

As members of the Radical Party, we are actually convinced that the paralysis suffered by the European Community, its incapacity to transform itself into a real United States of Europe, derives from other factors. On the one hand, its insistence on considering the political and institutional aspects of building the community as a superstructure that would crown a unified economic edifice. Such concept reduces the process of unification to a querelle between experts and to an eternal inter-governmental bartering. On the other hand, its incapacity to set goals rising to the heights of its ambitions is also partly responsible for such situation of immobility.

There is, then, a double problem - to bring the issue of European union building back to a political terrain and raise the stakes. It is an urgent problem. In the absence of a challenge that is undoubtedly political in character and is a priority, the intergovernmental conference set for next December risks becoming one of the countless performances of a play that has already been seen, where the majority of the member nations will hide their national and electoral fears or concerns behind the so-called intransigent opposition of Mrs. Thatcher. And a revision of the jurisdiction of the European Parliament may be paying the price for this.

The issue of the immediate joining of the "Habsburg countries" could be this challenge. For the simple reason that an unwillingness to accept such challenge could have countless consequences for the whole of Europe. We know how heavy the economic mortgage weighing on these countries is. The political mortgages weighing on them are more serious yet. From the centrifugal tendencies operating in Czechoslovakia, to the tensions --and we have already seen the first explosions-- between Hungarians and Rumanians, to the accelerated breaking down of Yugoslavia along the Lebanese model... All this is undoubtedly sufficient to bury, within a few years (or even less) whatever great hopes had been stirred in 1989. To put on the European Community menu the issue of the Habsburg countries in terms of pure and simple (rapid) joining, means to force the heads of State and government to start from the main course. To answer in a different manner, i.e., no longer in vague or far away terms, the political, insti

tutional and strategic questions on which whole of Europe's present and future depend. To conceive the European Community no longer within the scope defined by the Yalta agreement, but rather, in a way that supersedes it.

The Radical Party aims at being an instrument for such challenge. In other words, it aims at being a place where men and women -- in addition to taking on their political and national duties-- meet and unite to face this challenge together. This without preventing them from pursuing other goals, within their country, party or movement. A transnational and trans-party (and we could say, even trans-movement) tool. An instrument which, in overcoming the traditional concept of a political party claiming to represent the whole of the aspirations, the ideas if not the feelings of its members, presents and represents itself, instead, as a simple added value, as a place, among other places, where a citizen can express one or some of the infinite parts of his/her personality and existence.

Members of the Radical Party exist in about thirty countries. Most of them, European ones. In Yugoslavia, on the occasion of the renewal of the parliament of thee Republic of Croatia, a dozen of them ran on different lists, among them the European federalist list, and the ecology one. Next June, during the legislative elections, some Radical Czechoslovakians will run in the Civic Forum lists, on those of the Republican Union and on a list of independents. In Hungary, they are preparing for the possibility of organizing a referendum on the issue of joining the European Community. In each of these three countries, they just started a campaign to gather signatures on a petition asking to join the European Community, and , at the same time, the convocation of Constituent Assembly for a United States of Europe.

This battle is facing a thousands problems. Not the least of which is the perception that this right of belonging to the single Europe that counts (because it does exist) is being denied them precisely by those countries that are already part of it. To join the Radical Party can also be a sign of a person's intention to fight so that this will no longer be the case.