Europe’s New Eastern Question
The European Union has been shaken by Brexit, Donald Trump’s election in the United States, and now political uncertainty in Germany. But the future of the EU is also being written in Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, and Russia, with profound implications for democratic institutions and regional security.
With right-wing populists ascendant in Poland and Hungary, and gaining ground elsewhere in the European Union, politics in the West looks increasingly like politics in Russia. For Sławomir Sierakowski, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw, and Adam Michnik, a leading architect of Poland’s Solidarity movement and of the country’s postcommunist transition, Europe’s illiberal turn reflects cultural insecurity and political failure as much as economic distress.