Kind words, cruel policies: The East Europeans hope for a helping hand from the EC, but disingenuous games are being played behind their backs, writes Jonathan Eyal

For the first time since the fall of Communism, a summit meeting is taking place between the presidency of the European Community - currently held by Britain - and the leaders of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the countries that make up the Visegrad group, named after the city where the alliance was agreed a year ago. The Foreign Office desperately wants Wednesday's meeting to indicate a genuine commitment to the region's welfare. But tea and sympathy in Whitehall will do little to reverse the litany of cynicism and missed opportunities that characterises EC policy.

Eastern Europe cannot be integrated into the EC overnight. Per capita gross domestic product in the East amounts to only 13 per cent of the EC average, and the combination of low income and large populations would impose an unbearable cost. In fact, opening up Eastern Europe to the sudden blast of Western competition would be the surest way of creating an economic wasteland, as has happened in the former East Germany. A gradual approach is clearly necessary, but it is here that the EC has failed most of all.

Britain spearheaded the EC association agreements with the Visegrad group, treaties that envisage the gradual lifting of trade barriers coupled with political consultation and possible full membership. But what the Community gave with one hand, it took back with the other.

Barriers to trade in 'import-sensitive' products such as iron, steel, textiles and food have been maintained. These items account for one third of Czech and Slovak exports, more than 40 per cent of Polish exports, and half of Hungary's. The EC claimed that it had to protect its own industries - in reality, Eastern Europe's exports in all these 'sensitive' sectors amount to less than 1 per cent of total EC production. The failure was one of political will, not economics.

Worse still, the EC Commission is using the panoply of its trade agreements to restrict the quotas still further. The Bulgarians, now negotiating their own association agreement, have discovered that the EC is proposing to be even stingier in the future.

The West constantly preaches the virtues of the market economy, but when the East Europeans wish to take advantage of it they are met by protectionism writ large. The Visegrad group is somehow expected to reform its economies through export-led growth, while trading opportunities remain restricted. A more contradictory policy can hardly be envisaged.

Yet even this is nothing compared with the disingenuous games being played behind the East Europeans' backs. The EC remains determined to portray itself as the master of the Continent, slowly pushing aside all other international institutions, despite the fact that the Community cannot by itself do all the work required.

The EC's assistance, under the Phare programme set up about three years ago, is bureaucratic and carries large overheads. Phare's reports, the source of so much pride for Community bureaucrats, remain an exercise in accounting gymnastics: commitments and promises are confused with actual cash payments, and a large proportion of the assistance is nothing more than export guarantees tied to purchases from individual states.

When Hungary's premier, Jozsef Antall, went to Paris in 1990, he was offered Ff3bn ( pounds 370m). Only later did he discover that this largesse was conditional on Hungary using French contractors for the Budapest underground railway. By then President Francois Mitterrand had already pocketed the reputation of a magnanimous leader.

The EC has also pushed aside the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, based in Geneva, which collates statistical information about Eastern Europe. Brussels, which still receives all the UN commission's data free, has refused to contribute a penny to the upkeep of the organisation and has reacted violently to any UN report that casts even the slightest doubt on its policies.

Yet the Community is very quick in dealing with the outcome, as opposed to the causes, of Eastern Europe's crisis. Everyone expects that the region's social decay will result in a large movement of people. Most of the anticipated migration is likely to come from the countries furthest to the east - the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. By narrowing the definition of a refugee entitled to asylum, EC countries are simply transferring this problem to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the first ports of call for many potential refugees.

Few Community countries are prepared to consider a joint approach on this issue. One of the main reasons for Britain's refusal to accept entry quotas for Yugoslav citizens was its anxiety to avoid creating a precedent: refugees cannot swim the Channel and, in the absence of a quota system, they will be stuck in the East. When a Czechoslovak refugee commissioner asked the EC for assistance in forward planning for such crises, she received no answer. Central Europe is already a dumping ground for people nobody wants and will increasingly serve as a human buffer zone for the West.

The Visegrad leaders are still expected to perform feats that few Western politicians would undertake. Poland's Prime Minister is supposed to cut pension and welfare payments to balance the budget; the Czechs and Slovaks are expected to live happily together after a traumatic divorce; while Hungary's Premier is urged to forget about the fate of millions of his kinsmen under threat in neighbouring states. These demands are made without the smallest indication as to how they could be met.

Jacques Attali, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, has urged the EC to tear up its association agreements and move towards a free-trade zone. The Foreign Office officials preparing for this week's meeting know that they are in no position to offer anything of the kind. Instead, they will promise that future political dialogue will be taken seriously.

Dialogue leading to what? The current association agreements say nothing about an eventual date for EC membership and therefore mean little to people accustomed to empty promises of a new dawn. The Community was created to solve precisely the kinds of problem that now plague the East, yet it is asking the East Europeans to solve their difficulties before they join. Furthermore, the association agreements contain no punitive clauses against countries which fall prey to nasty regimes. They remain hazy notions, another example of the supposed British virtue of 'pragmatism'.

The mood in Eastern Europe now resembles that in the Thirties when, as now, the West was too preoccupied to notice the decay engulfing the Continent. Then, as now, mediocre Western politicians were called upon to act in extraordinary times. Today's leaders still talk about a vision of a united and prosperous Europe. Yet this vision remains hollow, with every politician really more interested in the harvests - political and agricultural - obtainable at home.

In the case of Eastern Europe, the choice between enlarging the EC and deepening it remains a false one. The stability of Europe depends on doing both at the same time.

The author is Director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

(Photograph omitted)