AS EUROPE emerges from the depths of quarantine and recession, its geopolitical landscape will reveal a significant change, the result of trends that emerged before 2020. Since these trends disturb a status quo that sustains illusory feelings of confidence and superiority among elites in Western Europe, it can only slowly, and barely, be acknowledged.

Before the pandemic, many saw the East-West divide of the European Union (EU) as a “Rich Man-Poor Man” rift between a prosperous, modern, worldly Western Europe, on one hand, and a poor, backward, isolated Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), on the other. Western leaders easily took a skeptical and condescending tone toward the EU’s eastern members, in large part due to the lingering perception of these states as the misfortunate orphans of Nazi and Soviet rule. To say nothing of the low opinion of Central and Eastern Europe in popular culture; in Paris and Berlin, Central Europe is viewed as a regional backwater—Europe’s version of West Virginia.

Indeed, right up until the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe liberated themselves from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, they were routinely ignored, misunderstood, or ritually described as “backward.” One of the most popular English-language books about Europe, The Europeans, by Luigi Barzini, focuses on Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the former West Germany—and, weirdly, even the United States—but not a single country in Central or Eastern Europe. And neither the European Union nor its predecessor, the European Economic Community, ever called themselves West European, even though until 2004 all of their members were located in Western Europe. In Brussels, “Europe” usually means Western Europe.

Yet some CEE countries are, in terms of national progress, becoming the equals of, and even superior to, France and Germany—two EU founders and its two largest, wealthiest members. Recent statistical measures of economic growth, employment, income, prosperity, strong currencies, life expectancy, tax and debt burdens, global engagement, Chinese economic penetration, innovation, entrepreneurship, manufacturing, immigration, crime, and terrorism all show that four ex-Soviet satellites on the EU’s eastern frontier—the Visegrád Group or V4—demonstrate better performance than France or Germany in almost every benchmark metric.

And why is this important? Because the better-performing CEE countries are undermining the reputations, governance models, and leadership of Berlin and Paris, and evident, systemic failings by the EU’s Western European capitals can only sustain the populist, or “illiberal,” politics of Central Europe and Eastern Europe. West European elites are understandably not anxious to confront their widespread, persistent policy failures, so they remain little-known. But the long-established reputations of Paris and Berlin are being undermined by reams of data. Western Europe still sports larger economies, higher incomes, and longer life expectancies, but these represent a fading legacy of decades of prosperity and peace that was denied to the EU’s eastern members. The indicators in which some CEE states still lag, like corruption or pollution, are similarly an inheritance of ex-communist rule. Pre-pandemic economic and social progress looked very good for Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, and troubling for Germany and France. If these trends resume—and there is no reason to think they won’t—the East will soon outshine the West.

THE ECONOMIES and finances of the V4, for example, are far healthier across many sectors than France and Germany. Pre-pandemic data indicated that the four Central European countries were rapidly gaining on the economic prosperity and financial stability of Europe’s two largest powers. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the Visegrád Four long enjoyed significantly higher levels of economic growth and employment than Paris or Berlin. The gross domestic product (GDP) of the V4 grew an average of 4.3 percent in 2018, compared to 1.6 for France and Germany. In both Hungary and Poland, the growth of GDP was 5.1 percent, more than three times the average rate for France and Germany. The worst growth rate among the V4—Czechia’s 3.0 percent—was still double Germany’s growth rate. Given Germany’s stellar reputation as Europe’s economic powerhouse, this is significant. Yet inflation remained mild across all four Visegrád countries, ranging from 1.7 percent in Poland to 2.9 percent in Hungary.

Slower growth was forecast for France and Germany in 2020, even before the coronavirus pandemic, with the International Monetary Fund predicting 1.1 percent growth for Germany and 1.3 percent for France. Somewhat slower growth was also forecast for the V4 countries—from 3.3 percent for Hungary to 2.6 percent for Czechia—but again, the worst-performing V4 country was still going to enjoy a rate of growth expected to be double that of France and even better than Germany’s. And some analysts saw this trend continuing for at least another decade. A recent HSBC Global Research report, The World in 2030, anticipated the V4 countries would continue vigorous GDP growth rates of 3.4—3.6 percent to the year 2030, when it forecast a 0.9 percent growth rate for Germany and a 1.1 percent rate for France.

The economies of the V4 are more vigorous in many other respects. Commercial real estate investment in the V4, for example, was still skyrocketing in the first quarter of 2020, when more than €3.78 billion was invested in the four countries, plus Romania. This was an increase of 79 percent over Q1 2019 for these countries. By contrast, Germany’s growth in real estate investment was 35 percent, France’s was 21 percent, and the average for Western Europe was 51 percent. And speaking of real estate, Warsaw will soon host the tallest building in the entire European Union, Varso Tower, in a project led by a Slovak developer, HB Reavis.

Given this, it is unsurprising that the V4 nations also enjoyed higher levels of employment than Germany and France, both on average and in most one-to-one comparisons. Average unemployment in the Visegrád countries in 2018 was 4.1 percent, while it averaged 6.3 percent in France and Germany. The latter’s poor showing was due almost entirely to France, whose steep 9.1 percent rate would be associated in the United States with a serious recession. Yet Czechia enjoyed a lower rate (2.3 percent) than even Germany (3.4 percent). Hungary’s rate of 3.7 percent was only slightly higher than Germany’s, and every V4 country had much less unemployment than France.

Skeptics of high GDP growth in the V4 countries, of course, can point to their EU subsidies. Indeed, Slovakia received €11.3 billion in EU funds in the most recent seven-year budget cycle (2007–15) and is set to receive €13.8 billion in the current (2014–20) cycle. Czechia received €23.3 billion in the previous cycle and is budgeted for €21.6 billion in the new cycle; Hungry got €27.7 billion previously and is in line for €21.5 billion; and Poland got €61.6 billion before and is getting €76.9 billion now.

Yet there are serious flaws in this approach. Despite the fact that Germany is the largest net contributor of EU funds, its economy has benefited the most under the euro, gaining €1.9 trillion from 1999 and 2007, or about €23,000 per German. Berlin’s economy benefits from the EU’s eurozone in many ways, according to Bertelsmann Stiftung, a respected German think-tank. Without the euro, Germany’s GDP would be about 0.5 percentage points lower, taking it down to 1 percent in 2018 (see GDP figures above). By 2025, the benefits could amount to €170 billion more for Germany. The higher German GDP also accounts for about 0.5 percent less unemployment.

In fact, the GDP of almost every EU member is higher as a result of the integration of Europe’s economies, according to a study by the American Chamber of Commerce of the EU, and France and Germany enjoy an even higher percentage increase in annual GDP than do the V4 countries. According to the report, Germany gained a 1.55 percent increase in GDP per capita, and France gained 1.14 percent, while the gains for the V4 ranged from 0.79 percent for Czechia to 0.49 percent for Poland. 

Even if EU subsidies account for some portion of the GDP in the V4 countries, the issue of dramatically lower rates of GDP growth in France or Germany hang over the issue and beg a question—is it smart for Paris and Berlin to “impoverish” themselves by allotting billions of euros to other countries while their own economies sputter?

AS A result of stronger economic growth and lower unemployment, Central European incomes were growing dramatically and gaining on incomes in France and Germany, both of whose national incomes have stagnated for decades. Starting out in poverty and isolation under communist rule in 1989–91, average national income in Slovakia rose from 50 percent of Europe’s average in 2000 to 75 percent by 2017—a 50 percent increase. Incomes rose in Hungary from 53 to 65 percent of Europe’s average, from 53-70 percent among Poles, and from 62–76 percent among Czechs. 

France and Germany, meanwhile, have long been accustomed to stagnating—even declining—national incomes as far back as 1980. In France, national income was 117 percent of the European average in 1980 but fell to 110 percent by 2017. In Germany, income was 126 percent of the average in 1980 and 123 percent in 2017. At this rate, V4 national incomes will match the European average in two decades.

EVEN MORE remarkable is the failure of the euro, one of the central “achievements” of the EU, championed by Germany and France. Twenty years after its introduction, according to the Centre for European Policy (CEP), a German think-tank, most countries that adopted the euro have experienced a drop in prosperity. While the economies of Germany and Denmark have gained by adopting the euro, five of the eight countries CEP studied—Spain, Belgium, Portugal, France, and Italy—all suffered negative impacts, ranging from about €5,000 to almost €74,000 per person. Italy’s losses totaled €4.325 billion, and France’s were €3.591 billion from 1999 to 2007. Greece experienced a modest gain in this period, but all of it before the crash of 2008–09; in every year since, Greece has suffered increasing drops in per-capita GDP. 

While the CEP study has its skeptics, a recent report on the twentieth anniversary of the euro from the European Parliament acknowledged,

While the euro may have contributed to some efficiency gains, it seems to have done little to facilitate intra-euro-area trade … and the process of greater financial integration has thus far provided to be a destabilizing factor for the euro area rather than a force for sustainable growth.

This currency—lacking a common state, budget, or finance ministry—will always remain hostage to its weakest members, which makes the euro very weak indeed. This is why Czechia, Hungary, and Poland have thus far avoided the eurozone.

AVERAGE LIFE expectancy across Western, Central, and Eastern Europe is 78.3 years, as measured by the United Nations for the years 2015–2020, and it is 82.5 years in France and 81.1 years in Germany. Despite living very impoverished lives as recently as 1991, however, life expectancy in the V4 countries has been advancing rapidly, pegged now at 79.2 years in Czechia (an increase of 6.7 years since the period 1990–1995), 76.6 years in Hungary (an increase of 7.2 years), 78.5 years in Poland (7.3 more years), and 77.3 years in Slovakia (up by 5.7 years). During this same period, the average increase in life expectancy was only 5.1 years in both France and Germany.

This is supported by health and welfare metrics moving in unexpected directions. Such metrics still show mixed results in comparisons between France and Germany, on one hand, and the V4 countries, but it remains surprising, for example, that the 2019 Bloomberg Global Health Index scores show Germany dropping seven places, from the sixteenth to the twenty-third healthiest country, while Hungary moved up four places and Czechia and Slovakia each moved up one place, albeit with overall lagging health scores.

IN THE Visegrád countries, the tax burden on both individuals and families is lighter, reflecting an average of 4.6 percent of GDP in these four countries, whereas it doubles to an average of 9.7 percent of GDP on the French and Germans. Total national taxes are also higher in France and Germany, which collect taxes amounting to an average 45 percent of GDP, while in the V4 countries that average is 36 percent.  

Despite lower taxes, government debt is also lower in Central Europe, with total public debt in the V4 countries averaging 50.3 percent of GDP in 2018, according to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office. Paris and Berlin do much worse on debt, and in ways that undermine the stability of the euro. National debt rose to 60.9 percent in Germany and a whopping 98.4 percent in France. This is not only a policy failure and a sign of weak leadership, but it shows how Berlin and Paris break EU rules rather than lead by example—yet without any criticism that they undermine the “rule of law,” so often invoked by critics of the EU’s easterly members.

The Maastricht Treaty governing the EU prohibits its members from incurring debt in excess of 60 percent of GDP, a rule long violated by France and Germany. Indeed, public debt has been growing among most eurozone members since the financial crisis of 2008, and France ranks among seven nations with the highest government debt ratios. Hungary, meanwhile, is the only V4 country whose 2018 debt likewise exceeded the EU’s threshold; Prague, Warsaw, and Bratislava all obeyed the rule.

Stronger economies and fiscally conservative governments made Central and East European countries better prepared than West European countries to weather the covid-19 pandemic and recession, according to financial analysts. In the V4, a report in Euromoney said, 

Government debt-to-GDP levels across the region have declined substantially over the last decade on the back of strong economic growth, falling borrowing costs, and prudent budget management. This means most [V4] countries have room for fiscal stimulus to mitigate the impact of coronavirus.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development forecasted a GDP contraction of 4.3 percent for the eight Central European countries it monitors but said the region will “bounce back strongly in 2021.” By comparison, in the eurozone—which includes Slovakia but none of the other V4 countries—the economy will contract by 8–12 percent, according to the European Central Bank.

REFUTING AN impression that the V4 countries are isolated, backward, and unable to compete, they are much more engaged in the global economy than either Paris or Berlin. Exports account for an average of 73.4 percent of GDP in the V4 countries, while imports account for 70.8 percent. By comparison, exports account for an average of only 30.2 percent of GDP for France and Germany, and imports account for 28.4 percent. As with their rates of GDP growth, moreover, exports of goods and services are growing in the V4 countries, increasing an average of 5.3 percent in 2018 over the prior year, compared to France and Germany’s anemic growth rate of 2.8 percent. To put this in perspective, if the Visegrád 4 were one country, according to an analysis by Brussels-based Carnegie Europe, “they would be by far Germany’s largest trading partner, with an annual turnover in bilateral trade nearly twice the size of China.”

Global engagement at the most personal level—travel and tourism—shows that Hungary has a higher ratio of tourists to local residents, 145 percent, than does France at 126.4 percent, and that Hungary, Czechia (109.2 percent), and Poland (43.4 percent) all have higher ratios of foreign visitors to locals than does Germany (43.3 percent). Another example of Central and Eastern Europe’s larger global role is the €7.7 billion that has been invested in the CEE’s commercial real estate market by East Asian sources since 2013—with South Korea leading the pack—a mere €1 billion less than Europe’s economic giant, Germany, has invested. Another sign is the twenty-six Indian software firms—one of which employs 2,000 people—that established operations in 2019 in Hungary, where more than 20,000 Chinese expatriates are also working.

While foreign direct investment is important to the V4, the largest driver of Hungary’s booming national economy is a 15 percent annual surge in wages. Partly as a result, Budapest ranked number one in 2018 in housing price increases across 150 cities worldwide, while Berlin ranked twenty-ninth and Paris sixty-third, placing the City of Light behind Bucharest, Romania; Bratislava, Slovakia; Warsaw, Poland; and Sofia, Bulgaria.

DESPITE ITS more expansive engagement with the world, Central and Eastern Europe have avoided the high levels of Chinese state-driven investments in key industries that is widespread in Western Europe, where Beijing’s role and influence is often hidden. Since 2012, when China launched its 16+1 initiative to invest billions in sixteen CEE countries, there has been much alarm about Chinese economic influence in this region, especially since eleven of the sixteen countries are EU members.

Yet as with so many issues, the real picture is the opposite to what the alarmists imagine. In fact, Chinese economic penetration of Western Europe far surpasses its role in Central Europe. Overall, Beijing’s investment in all EU-member countries has risen dramatically since 2000, from fewer than 500 million euros to more than 3.5 billion euros in 2018, according to Dutch data sciences firm Datenna, whose “China-EU FDI Radar” tracks Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU to provide greater transparency regarding the investments and their ties to the Chinese government.

There is often a significant government role in such investments, which are often disguised as private investments, giving Beijing hidden control or influence inside European industry. “In many of the European mergers and acquisitions, Chinese state influence was effectively hidden by layers of ownership, complex shareholding structures, and deals executed via European subsidiaries,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Datenna’s analysis of the complex structures concludes that Chinese parties have acquired 479 companies in Western Europe (including Cyprus and Malta), with Chinese government influence in at least 181 of them. In Central Europe, there were only forty acquisitions and in only twenty-one of them does Beijing exercise influence.

The EU’s own European Court of Auditors agrees with this broad outline of the problem, saying in a recent report that “it was difficult to obtain complete and timely data and thus to gain an overview of [Chinese] investments,” and that “concerns have been raised … in the EU about the dependence on Chinese investments in strategic industries [and] their concentration in sensitive or strategically important sectors.” Yet the agency’s country-level data also reveal that every one of the top thirteen recipients of Chinese investments are in Western Europe, while thirteen of the fifteen countries that receive the least investment are located in Central and Eastern Europe.

THE V4 countries, moreover, have embraced both entrepreneurship and innovation, and they are outpacing France and Germany, sometimes dramatically, in these areas. For instance, it would surprise no one that higher levels of education would help spark higher levels of innovation, but many might be surprised to learn that three Polish cities have larger percentages of people with higher education than either Berlin or Paris, and that the populations of the capitals of V4 countries Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia have higher levels of post-secondary education than Berlin.

One result is that patent applications increased in 2018 by an average of 21 percent over the previous year across all four Visegrád countries, according to the European Patent Office (EPO), while in France and Germany applications increased by fewer than one (0.95) percent. In France, applications actually fell by 2.8 percent. The best-performing Visegrád country was Hungary, which enjoyed a 26.3 percent increase in applications, while the worst was Czechia (17.5 percent), whose increase in patent applications was still almost four times as great as Germany’s (4.7 percent). The average increase for all thirty-eight state members of the EPO was 3.8 percent. 

The V4 capitals of Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw were ranked in February 2019 among “The Best 50 Cities for a Startup in the World,” according to Valuer, a start-up incubator in Copenhagen, which ranked Bratislava, Slovakia, and Wroclaw, Poland, among “25 Up-and-Coming Startup Cities to Watch.” Speaking of cities, a study of the CEE’s business climate ranked all EU cities of 250,000 or more people by productivity (GDP per person), connectivity, and human capital. Of the top twenty cities, sixteen were in Central and Eastern Europe and eight were in the V4.

Manufacturing, in general, is stronger in three of the V4 countries than it is in France, Germany, and, indeed, most West European countries, according to one very reputable industry study. Cushman & Wakefield’s “2020 Global Manufacturing Risk Index” ranks Czechia, Hungary, and Poland among its top twelve countries, alongside the United States and China. Germany is ranked alongside Slovakia in its third tier, while France is ranked in the fourth tier along with nine other West European countries.

With so much business activity, corporate aviation is soaring in the V4 countries. While growth in the size of aviation fleets declined 1.7 percent on average across Europe since 2017, they jumped 41 percent in Czechia and 37.5 percent in Poland. Looking forward, Central and Eastern Europe has almost two aircraft on order for every five aircraft in service, indicating much greater ambitions for growth than Western Europe, which has ordered just over one aircraft for every four in service.

Higher rates of technological adaptation in the V4 countries are driving higher rates of innovation and entrepreneurship. The adoption of digital technologies across all major EU industries, for example, is higher in Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia than in France or Germany, according to a 2019 survey of 13,500 firms across Europe by the European Investment Bank (EIB). The EIB ranked Czechia among Europe’s top five “frontrunner” countries; Slovakia placed among the next nine “strong” countries, Hungary led the next category of eight “moderate” digitizing nations—outperforming France and Germany in this same category—and Poland lagged in the middle of the final seven countries with “modest” levels of digitalization. Czechia and Slovakia also rank above the EU average, while France and Germany rank behind it.

These statistics are even more striking in light of the fact that, according to the EIB study, “larger firms have higher rates of digital adoption than smaller firms,” and Western Europe’s much larger and more mature economy likely has many more larger firms, on average, than Central and Eastern Europe. Digitalization matters because, according to the study, “Digital firms perform better and are more dynamic: they have higher labor productivity, grow faster, and have better management practices.”

The technologies being adopted in CEE countries include both hardware and software. Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia, for example, rank in the top one-half of countries using industrial robots, according to the HSBC Global Research report, based on the ratio of robots per worker, and Slovakia ranks even higher than France in its usage of robotics. Broadband speed is higher in Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland than it is in France or Germany. Moreover, Czech cyber-security group Avast was in 2018 the largest tech initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange.

Perhaps innovation and entrepreneurship are flourishing in Central Europe because one of the V4 countries outranks Germany in measures of economic freedom, and all four of them outrank France, according to the Heritage Foundation’s “2020 Index of Economic Freedom.” The index places Czechia and Germany in the “mostly free” category, but with Czechia out-ranking Germany. The index ranks the other V4 countries as “moderately free,” along with France, which is outranked by the entire quartet of V4 countries in the annual study’s twelve measures of economic freedom. The V4 still have progress to make, according to the annual competitiveness rankings of the World Economic Forum and the Swiss research group, IMD, but they are gaining on a Western Europe whose competitive position is stagnant or declining.

THE MOST significant violation of the law in the EU also had the largest negative consequences, yet it is hardly even acknowledged that there was something rather willful about German chancellor Angela Merkel’s very personal decision in 2015 to allow more than one million migrants into Europe. What followed were waves of violence and terrorism not seen in Europe since World War Two, the rise of new populist and Euro-skeptic parties, and a steady string of electoral defeats for Merkel that stalled any new leadership initiatives by Berlin or Paris.

Two years after her decision, the German Bundestag concluded there was no legal basis for Merkel’s decision, and her government offered none. She neither put the issue to the EU nor the Bundestag but simply discussed throwing open Europe’s borders with a few aides. A detailed report by Der Spiegel said Merkel ignored pleas by her Interior Minister and the head of the German Federal Police that she stiffen border controls. She also violated both Germany’s asylum laws and the EU’s “Dublin rule,” which agreed that all migrants be returned to the EU country-of-entry. Perhaps most important, EU treaties do not call for open borders on Europe’s frontiers.

Merkel later made it plain that the decision was purely personal. In an interview with a German newspaper in August 2017, she said—referring four times to her decision’s personal nature—“I’d make all of the important decisions of 2015 the same way again. It was an extraordinary situation, and I made my decision based on what I thought was right from a political and humanitarian standpoint” (italics added).

MERKEL’S DECISION prompted a surge in terrorism, which the V4 countries avoided. The vast majority of deaths and injuries from terrorism in Europe were due to jihadist terror during the period 2011–2019. The data shows clearly that terrorism spiked in 2015, the year Merkel opened Europe’s doors. The number of jihadist incidents (completed, failed, or foiled attacks) jumped from four in 2014 to seventeen in 2015. Deaths shot up from four to 150, and arrests ballooned from 395 to 687. By 2019, all three data points remained dramatically higher than before 2015.

France in particular ranks first among European nations for jihadist violence, but Western Europe generally sees a great deal more terrorism than does Central Europe. Of the seventeen jihadist attacks across Europe in 2015, fifteen of them occurred in France, where 377 people were arrested for jihadist-inspired terrorism. Germany was among six other West European countries that had between twenty and seventy-five jihadist-related arrests.

The V4 countries, on the other hand, had five arrests among them and zero attacks.

More recently, France ranked first and Germany second for completed, failed, or foiled jihadist attacks (seven) in 2019, and Western Europe accounted for seventeen of eighteen jihadist incidents that year. France also ranked first for jihadist arrests, with 202 in 2019, and Germany came in third, with thirty-two arrests (Spain was second with fifty-six suspects). West European countries accounted for 411 of Europe’s 436 arrests of jihadist-terror suspects in 2019. That year, the V4 countries arrested a mere three suspects.

Of course, France and Germany have much larger populations than the V4 countries, but the annual ratio of terror arrests during the period 2017–19 ranged from 1:179,357 people to 1:331,188 in France, while the highest annual ratios in any V4 country ranged from 1:2.6 million people in Czechia to 1:9.6 million in Poland.

Terrorism has not been the only consequence of the migrant crisis. About 1,200 women were assaulted by as many as 2,000 men on New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne, Hamburg, Duesseldorf, Stuttgart, and other German cities, according to the national police. Holger Münch, president of the German Federal Crime Police Office, said, “There is a connection between the emergence of this phenomenon and the rapid migration of 2015.” In a related development, female genital mutilation is growing dramatically in Germany due to immigration, increasing by 44 percent since 2017, according to German Minister Franziska Giffey, who issued a report in June 2020, citing greater immigration from countries where the practice is common.

The migrant crisis aside, rates of crime and violence have been reaching historic lows in the V4 countries, trending downward for ten years in three of the countries—while crime in Germany remains stubbornly high and is increasing in France, according to statistics from Eurostat. The murder rate in Czechia in 2018 was about half its 2009 rate. In Hungary, the rate is 61 percent of its 2009 level and in Poland, 55 percent. While declining slightly, Slovakia’s relatively high murder rate is comparable to France’s, ranging from 1.0 to 1.5 murders per 100,000 people in the years 2016–18. Germany’s murder rate is comparable to current rates in the V4, but in both France and Germany murder remains at the same level since 2009, showing no progress.

The incidence of rape is almost twice as high in France as it was a decade ago, and its twenty-nine-plus rapes per 100,000 people in 2018 were almost five times the number in Czechia (6.14), which has the highest incidence of rape in the V4 countries. Germany’s incidence rate has remained stable at about ten rapes per 100,000 people, but that is dramatically higher than all four V4 countries. Even Hungary—where rapes have increased from 2.27 in 2009 to 5.53 in 2018—has about one-half of Germany’s rate.

Theft is also much more common in France and Germany than in the V4. Theft is five times more likely in Germany, and almost eight times more likely in France, than it is in Poland. The worst rate in the V4—Hungary’s 656 thefts per 100,000 people in 2018—is about half Germany’s rate and less than a third of the rate in France. Incidents of theft dropped 42-57 percent in all V4 countries since 2009, but remain stubbornly high in France, while Germany reported a slight decrease since 2016.

While the worst effects of the migrant crisis were blunted by the leaders of the V4 countries, the future of the EU is now on hold. EU immigration policy remains unclear since the V4 countries rebelled in 2016, creating border controls to stem the flows of migrants, which Western Europe criticized—and then copied. This was the first breakdown of the EU’s Schengen Zone open borders accord. Five years later, the EU is still wrestling to craft an immigration policy its members can support.

The Merkel-made crisis crippled very ambitious plans by French president Emmanuel Macron to deepen and strengthen the EU. It also led to a third consecutive defeat for Merkel’s governing coalition in local elections on October 29, 2018. The next day, Merkel announced she would surrender leadership of her party and step down as chancellor in 2021, creating a lame-duck administration that would last three years.

Finally, many analysts believe Merkel’s migrant crisis led to the Brexit vote of 2016, both for reasons related to terrorism, but also because EU member states and their voters were not consulted. Alain Finkielkraut, the French philosopher, said, “If it weren’t for Merkel’s Wir schaffen das (‘We can do this’) and the million migrants Germany took in in 2015, Brexit wouldn’t have happened. That sent a shockwave through Europe. Europeans weren’t asked.” In Great Britain itself, Justice Minister Dominic Raab made a pro-Brexit speech in which he said, “It is undeniable that regaining control over our borders would be a valuable defensive tool in protecting Britain from future terrorist attacks.”

IT REMAINS to be seen how many more ways the EU can fail itself, but it is clear that the enterprise is failing in Western Europe, not Central Europe, and this is due to the actions of Berlin and Paris, not Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, or Warsaw.

In the twilight years of his eventful life, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned besieged Polish leaders seeking his advice to avoid the example set by their West European peers, since their customs, he said, “are daily being bastardized by the general European tendency to adopt the tastes and manners of the French.” It seems that much of Central Europe has gotten the message, if not from the French philosopher, perhaps from the wanton examples established by Berlin and Paris.

Kevin J. McNamara is an Associate Scholar of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of Dreams of a Great Small Nation: The Mutinous Army that Threatened a Revolution, Destroyed an Empire, Founded a Republic, and Remade the Map of Europe, a history of the dramatic role of the Czecho-Slovak Legion in World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the founding of Czecho-Slovakia in 1918.

Image: Unsplash / Bence Balla-Schottner