Marking ten years of Slovakia’s participation in the European Union. Was it worth it for us? Slovakia entered the EU with far less economic strength than it has today. In gross domestic product per capita, we have passed Portugal and Greece. In purchasing power, even the Czech Republic. Can you believe it? Are we happy about this? According to Nobel Prize in Economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and also the European Commission, Slovakia is a country where economic growth has not been reflected in a rise in the standard of living. During the referendum on joining the EU, I held to the view that we should keep a sober opinion. Not all that glitters is gold. This also applies to the European Union. The saddest thing is that our politicians often protect foreign interests instead of ours.
Europe, in its original Greek meaning, is a “curious woman.” At least in words, Europe is interested in a fair and dignified life for its citizens, including ours. Already during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, the unacceptability of extreme property differences was pointed out. The profit from our economy is not distributed evenly among the citizens, municipalities, and regions of Slovakia. Bratislava is now the fifth richest region in the EU. What comes to us from abroad in the form of European funds is rather a dole than a dignified and fair reward for our work, productivity, health, and the ruined lives of our children. Rather, the situation is that we support the prosperity of other European countries through the export of dividends and profit.
When we founded ZMOS, one of my ideas was to strive to protect the interests of municipalities, regions, and only then the state. That is, subsidiarity. In 1990, many politicians at local and regional level still preferred so-called societal interests over local or regional ones. A mayor should, however, mainly care about his municipality. And that is also true regarding Slovakia’s relationship with the European Union. We are responsible first of all for Slovakia and only then for Europe.
Elections to the European Parliament are approaching, which are to be held on 24 May 2014. So far, Slovak Members of the European Parliament usually tell us that they do not represent Slovakia but pan-European interests. It is the same nonsense that I had sought to remove from our minds already in 1990.
We live in a country where many citizens do not have jobs. Unemployment has become a normal condition in a person’s life. We do not give young people a chance to work. We do not care for our children. What will they become? We receive warnings from the European Commission that we do not provide our own resources for active labour-market measures. We allegedly have no funds? Slovakia has, after all, grown economically. The fact that it has no funds to address unemployment is untrue, and yet according to Eurostat, it allocates “nothing” to unemployment elimination.
In the European Union, there is a social non-profit economy that provides jobs to millions of people (about 6% of total employment). One of its main actors is local self-government. Why is this not the case in Slovakia? In Europe, healthcare, municipal waste, energy, water, and public-interest services are common as part of the non-profit sector. A private owner can go bankrupt with his social institution, but a municipality must care for vulnerable people. Profitability is possible in the social sector, but not primary. We are the only country where the importance of employment in the social sector has decreased. Private owners are in profit, but the quality and accessibility of services have deteriorated rapidly. What should have priority? The health of our children, or questionable monetary profit?
With wages, Slovakia is violating commitments to which it is bound toward Europe. We cannot have an economy at three-quarters of the EU level and wages at only one-fifth. Cars made in Slovakia are sold at world prices, but wages are exploitative. Wages must be at least three times higher, and only then will domestic demand kick in, creating more work and a desire to live in Slovakia. Despite this wage increase, an adequate profit for investors and entrepreneurs would be secured. Every socially necessary form of work must be rewarded. If citizens care for public things, for their children, parents, nobody rewards them, but if this care is privatized, suddenly there are funds.
We have a poor health situation, of which the shorter life expectancy is evidence: we have a six-year shorter life in dignified old age compared with the Czech Republic. The social economy that is common in Europe cares for human well-being and not for the profit of anonymous shareholders in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. Why can’t our municipalities and towns develop social and communal economy? Profit cannot be at the expense of health and our children.
It is an incontrovertible fact that we are dying out. In a few generations, Slovakia will be gone. Paradoxically, there will be a labour shortage. We solve unemployment this way, if one speaks ironically. But this way? Why does this problem not exist in France? Because they care for families there. Lord Marmoth (WHO expert) once answered a question about why the health situation in Slovakia is desperate by saying that people there probably do not care for people. Why do we live at all if not for our children, whom we cannot afford because it is a luxury? Who will care for us, who will feed us, bring us joy, and who will bury us? So let us allow decent people to have a family.
When I lived in the USA, public schools there were essentially spaces for troubled youth who would otherwise disrupt public order. Let us prevent our school system from reaching such a situation. The European Union points to inadequate education and lack of state interest in the level of schooling. Slovakia contributes a fraction of what is normal for education, science, and research. In this way, we will not be a partner and a contributor in Europe, but only a supplier of cheap, uneducated labour. Why don’t we want to learn?
Solidarity between generations, citizens, and regions is the foundation of life and the essence of European integration. The European Commission warns us of indifference toward the poor and that, in Slovakia, the ever-growing gap between the rich and the poor is widening. We punish older people for still being alive. The pensions we promise them are still lower and are already at odds with Slovakia’s obligations today. We are contrary to the need for cohesion and solidarity on which European coexistence is built. Europe is built on cohesion and solidarity, so why not Slovakia?
In Slovakia, unjustified poverty is growing despite the right to a social minimum. Up to twenty percent of Slovaks cannot afford a decent basic lunch such as their parents could afford. It is disgraceful to receive food aid in a country that once had food self-sufficiency. Even more painful is that we “failed” to distribute food aid, and for that reason, we became a source of shame for all of Europe. Now we may ask: where do we belong? To the European Union, or to the African Union? One person is building a castle while another has no shack. We have two Slovakias, mentally divided by apartheid into the world of the rich and the world of the poor.
Of course, European bodies point out that Slovakia creates nothing and that we are constantly reducing social spending. This cannot continue indefinitely. That is a path to ruin. We need a vision and a clear idea of what I want to accomplish for Slovakia. If I have business interests, I will fulfil them, but I cannot live only at others’ expense and on credit. We have plenty of ideas. For example, who, for instance, knows that the global network of Mexican food can be a Slovak idea? What are Slovaks creating today?
The environment must be a place where one can live and breathe. Why are we cheaply selling off the country, land, and water? Our country, water, and air should not be for sale. We have it only on loan from our forefathers and must pass it on undamaged to our children. We do not need our country coated with information smog or crowded with gambling arcades. Should arcades belong to civic infrastructure? Such evil is impossible in European cities and municipalities, so why is it possible here. Instead of arcades, we need kindergartens and other civic infrastructure.
Yes, even European institutions are corrupt and therefore need to be kept on a short leash. No one will give us anything for free. But why can’t we use EU funds? Slovakia could receive much more from the European Union than before. We only need to be bolder and insist on Slovak interests. I have known many Slovak subservient representatives working in the European Union. Let us get rid of them. We have received several warnings from the European Commission against party-based nominations for every position. For this, we can often blame ourselves, because everywhere we place nephews, nieces, uneducated people, devoted ignorants, and then we still wonder why the world is unfriendly.
European institutions should not serve their officials, nor be an end in themselves for maintaining their prosperity. European institutions must also serve Slovaks. That is what this is about. If Europe were to serve only the interests of European bureaucrats, corporations, and only other countries—then Slovakia does not need to be there. That is what will also be decided in the elections to the European Parliament.
Europe must definitely not intervene in the lives of people on other continents, if no one invited us there, or if it violates international law. First and foremost, we must protect the shared interests of our municipalities, and only then those of Europe.
I wish that in Europe and at home we defended our Slovak interests and not foreign ones. I wish that from now on we had in state leadership and in Brussels people we can be proud of. Let us give capable people a chance.
Author: doc. RNDr. Miloslav Hetteš, CSc.
The author was the first chairman of ZMOS