Eastern European politicians have been absent from top positions in the EU and NATO, as well as in other key EU structures for the past 20 years, such as the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament.
Such a disparity comes, at least in the EU's case, despite Brussels’ formal stance claiming that all members are equal within the bloc.
Two decades after entering the EU and NATO, Eastern European countries are now concerned that they will again be ignored as the top jobs of both organizations are reshuffled later this year.
Spat Over NATO's Top Job
While Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s likely appointment as the new chief of NATO is endorsed by the US, the UK, France and Germany, the alliance’s newer members from the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are not that happy.
It’s worth recalling in this regard that other contenders for the NATO secretary general position include Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, whose ministers notified NATO of his possible candidacy in February, and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who has not submitted a bid but voiced interest in 2023.
“What moral credibility does this guy [Rutte] have?” former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said, in an apparent nod to the Netherlands' failure to meet its NATO commitment to spend 2% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) on defense during Rutte’s 13 years as prime minister.
He recalled that since the 2004 enlargement, there are 110 million people living in Central and Eastern Europe who now belong to NATO and the EU. “There are five big positions in the EU and NATO, and they rotate every five years, so that’s 25 jobs in total. During that time, 20 percent of the EU gets 7 percent of the jobs,” Ilves added.
Kallas, for her part, told Politico that if one thinks “about a geographical balance, it’s going to be the fourth [NATO] secretary general from the Netherlands.”
“And then there is a question [of] whether there are first-rank and second-rank countries in NATO. Are we equals or are we not equals? So these questions still remain,” she added.
Kallas was echoed by former Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks, who referred to the selection process for the NATO top job and said: “We feel that we were not consulted enough.”
“They [Western countries] had reasons behind to think that Baltic countries should not at this moment be proposing a candidate,” Pabriks added.
EU Race
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to receive another term after the EU’s top positions are redistributed later this year following June’s European Parliament election.
At the same time, the race for the other posts — European Council president, European Parliament president and the EU’s high representative for foreign policy — remain open.
The upcoming European Parliament election will come against the backdrop of ongoing differences between Western and Eastern Europe over Ukraine. Bloomberg news agency recently reported that “Europe’s East is losing faith in its West” over the issue of arming Ukraine.
Bloomberg cited an unnamed top European official as saying that the mood in diplomatic circles is that “should Russia ultimately win its war in Ukraine, Western Europe will not be forgiven and the whole European integration project since the fall of the Berlin Wall could be jeopardized as that rift becomes an indelible scar.”
“Governments in the West don’t understand that many in the East would never trust them again,” the official added.
More Active Colleagues?
Milan Uhrik, member of European Parliament (MEP) from the Slovak Republic and leader of the REPUBLIKA political movement, has meanwhile told Sputnik that he “would not be surprised if an Eastern European name appears in the management [of NATO or the EU], which would try to be even more active than its colleagues from the West.”
When asked about the potential consequences of the underrepresentation of Eastern European countries in the EU's political institutions, Uhrik said that “one of the risks is that these countries will feel unheard and unappreciated.”
“But the type of functionaries I am talking about - and they can be found in almost every country - do not care too much about their own nation. Their interest lies in defending the ‘center’ or ‘strongest element’ of these organizations and individual careers,” the MEP pointed out.
He added that each and every country “entered the EU knowing what power it would have in this organization, and that each country knows about it before, knows it now.”
“The very functioning of the EU, the incompetence of the current leadership, the promotion of harmful policies like the [2019] Green Deal or the [2023] New Migration Pact, the taking away of competences and funds from countries due to their disagreement with the center can have a greater impact,” Uhrik concluded.