The North-South divide and everything that gets left out in-between: conceptualizing Central and Eastern Europe to explain its positioning on climate change

Abstract

The North-South divide forms the central axis along which scholars study the contemporary global order. Yet many countries fall in-between the cracks of a world divided into core and periphery. This paper develops a structural account to understand the position of countries in this space of in-betweenness. The focus is on Central and Eastern Europe. I draw on already existing scholarship on liminalities, the varieties of capitalism and transition studies to argue that a liminal identity of in-betweenness goes hand-in-glove with a domestic logic of transitioning, as the state seeks to move somewhere else. Furthermore transitioning dynamics position the state in the semi-periphery, as the transition to the civilizational core requires capital and know-how from abroad. The resulting semi-peripheral position further underlines the liminal identity. The paper uses this apparatus to understand why CEE countries are typically climate change laggards within the EU. Their continuing liminal identity results in frustration over and resistance against the schooling tendencies of Brussels and Western European capitals. The dynamics of a sense of imposition of climate change mitigation policies stem from CEE’s liminal positioning as apprentices, but the reasons for the perceived alienness of such policies are located in domestic societal dynamics, and CEE countries’ economic structure. The specific political structures of communism and the communist transition have strengthened particularistic personal ties of friendship and family between individuals and the localities they live in, while simultaneously weakening general and abstract conceptions of the public good. Accordingly initiatives for preserving specific localities can be strong, but conceptions of protecting an abstract, global climate, are not well developed. Additionally, the material costs of protecting the climate are higher in post-communist economies due to their comparative advantage in resource and labour intensive industries, their reliance on foreign capital, and a lack of domestic innovations.

The North-South divide forms the central axis along which scholars study the contemporary order. Substantial literatures, including postcolonial scholarship, the globalizing IR approach and historical international relations advocate for a stronger focus on the global South’s agency, and for a better understanding of the contexts in which global South actors operate. ¹ The North-South divide is also the determining cleavage for framing international climate change negotiations. ²

An unfortunate side-effect emerged from the binary differentiation of the world into an underprivileged global South and an exploitative global North, namely that it does not adequately capture the situation of many countries. Many countries cannot legitimately claim for themselves the moral high ground of an emancipatory struggle against oppression from the core. ³ Nor can they count themselves to the allegedly civilizational core of the international order. The consequence is that these countries fall between the cracks, and receive surprisingly little scholarly attention. For example, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is often overlooked in the study of international politics, comparative politics and climate change studies. ⁴ IR struggles to locate the region and make adequate sense of it.

Several scholars already theorize the positioning of states that fall in-between North and South with conceptual apparati like liminality, semi-periphery or ‘the Global East’. ⁵ These terms share that they express a state of in-betweenness, of being neither here nor there, both geographically, and temporally. This paper builds on these efforts and develops an account of in-betweenness that directs attention to the identitarian foreign policy dimension, domestic dynamics of transitioning and the economy. The objective is to understand why CEE is less willing to make sacrifices for climate change than Western Europe despite higher threat perceptions surrounding environmental issues. Why are CEE countries regularly blocking or watering down EU legislation on climate mitigation?

The empirical focus is on the CEE member states of the European Union (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia), but the expectation is that the application is broader. CEE countries differ from one another in significant ways. Yet, they underwent similar developments since the end of the Second World War. They were all communist regimes, transitioned from communism to market democracies and acceded to the EU. Due to these institutional legacies, they share characteristic features and structural positions, to which this paper directs attention.

A focus on CEE allows scholars to embrace the very ambiguities many instinctively prefer to eradicate. By empirically directing attention to this region it is possible to gain deeper theoretical insights into the problematique of in-betweenness, which carries beyond CEE to a much broader set of contexts. For IR scholarship, such an approach can help to de-reify and soften clear-cut antagonistic positions between states. Problematizing the complexities of local particularities can help to identify opportunities for bridge-building with an eye towards obtaining international agreements on climate change mitigation.

Thus far the liminality literature focusses on the identity dynamics that emerge from the hierarchical positioning between a self and an other. ⁶ Yet, liminality is also a temporal category that defines a process of transitioning. The CEE countries have transitioned from communist societal systems to market based democracies. These domestic dynamics of transition profoundly interrelate with the discursive identity forming dimensions. CEE countries are liminals, because they are transitioning. By adding a focus on domestic level dynamics, a deeper understanding of how the dynamics of liminality operate becomes possible.

Furthermore, CEE countries’ liminality is mirrored in their economic structural position and the composition of their economies. The Varieties of Capitalism literature developed the category of dependent market economies. ⁷ CEE countries are quite developed, strongly industrialized and resource intensive economies. They are capital dependent economies, production sites with relatively skilled and cheap labour. The headquarters, where all the innovation and research takes place, are located elsewhere. A semi-peripheral economic position is the material condition that underlies the discursive dimension of liminality, and it emerged from the dynamics of transitioning, notably privatisation. ⁸ In sum, the CEE space of in-betweenness is defined by a liminal identity, a domestic transitioning dynamic and a semi-peripheral economic position. These three features mutually inform each other. The paper uses this theoretical apparatus to explain CEE’s positioning towards climate change.

In the context of the EU CEE countries are defined as climate change laggards, ⁹ who often inhibit the EU to design more ambitious climate change policies. While the CEE countries are far better at addressing climate change than Canada or the United States for example, they are behind in the EU. On average they produce 5% more per capita Green House Gas emissions than Western Europe. ¹⁰ Except for Slovenia they have all met their Kyoto protocol targets for 2008–2012 due to the steep drops in GDP that resulted from the collapse of communism. In 2024, however, some of these countries, notably Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia and Latvia are unlikely to meet them. ¹¹ All the CEE countries struggle to meet the EU’s 2030 targets to cut CO₂ emissions; in their emissions cuts they lag significantly behind Western Europe. ¹²

In the EU climate change policies are among the policy areas in which the East-West divide is most noticeable in the voting behaviour in the Council. ¹³ CEE countries have weakened proposed legislation frequently. ¹⁴ They blocked the adoption of the EU’s 2020 climate and energy package, and they watered down the 2030 package that was eventually adopted. ¹⁵ CEE countries pressured the EU to classify natural gas and nuclear energy under the green label, so that they can obtain financial assistance for the construction of nuclear and fossil gas facilities. ¹⁶ In an analysis of the Council’s voting records between 2007 and 2018 Ćetković and Buzogány found that the six CEE countries they analysed ‘have indeed most often been members of the “coalition of unwilling,” either by directly opposing or by abstaining from the majority position in the Council on energy issues’. ¹⁷ This paper’s focus is to explain this trend of environmental scepticism on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of the structural positioning of the region.

A resistance against European climate policies is partly a reactionary, identitarian move against the schooling tendencies of Brussels and Western European capitals. It is a form of resistance, that has given up on formulating any moral high ground from which it could operate. CEE’s structural position of neither here nor there has made formulating such a standpoint quite impossible. ¹⁸ How political elites can get away with such an approach, and how voters in CEE countries can elect them, also requires directing attention to domestic societal level dynamics. Unique forms of public-private relationships have emerged from the specific political structures of communism and the communist transition. Particularistic personal ties of friendship and family between individuals and the localities they live in are strong, while general and abstract conceptions of the public good are weak. ¹⁹ Accordingly local initiatives of ecological preservation can be powerful, while endeavours to protect an abstract, global climate, are not well developed. Furthermore the material costs of the energy transition are higher in post-communist economies, because CEE economies are particularly resource intensive. ²⁰ Climate change mitigation policies appear more threatening from a semi-peripheral position.

The remainder of this paper analyses these dynamics in more depth to develop a theoretical structural understanding of the space in-between the global North and the global South. The challenge is to recognize the difficult structural position CEE countries are located in, while not falling into the trap of victimization, because that would eliminate CEE’s agency. There needs to be room for critique, while avoiding complete self-loathing. The very positioning of CEE as an ambiguous space requires the scholar to maintain this same ambiguity in the analysis, and not to try to do away with it, as tempting as it might appear. This is the unique contribution of the notion of liminality. To work towards a better future, it is important to identify pathways towards mitigating climate change that recognize the region’s unique characteristics and contributions.

Carving out a space for Central and Eastern Europe

The division of the world into the global South and the global North is a key theme in IR scholarship. Scholars focus on how global South actors dispute or seek to revise the contemporary order. ²¹ The postcolonial literature gains traction, ²² and historically inclined scholars study under the global and imperial histories umbrella ordering arrangements in non-European geographical regions. ²³ The appetite for enhancing knowledge and awareness of actors from the global South is justifiably strong. However, this trend has one negative side-effect, namely that it omits localities that do not fit into the neat division between North and South, colonizer and colonized, or core and periphery, such as the CEE region. The recent geographical diversification of IR scholarship has not yet helped to steer attention to CEE. CEE appears too close to the core, not sufficiently distinct from it. ²⁴

Many post-socialist scholars seek affinities to post-colonial scholarship to highlight the similarities in the subjugations between Soviet and Western European imperialisms. Also Western Europe’s civilizational mission for CEE expressed in the accession dynamics to the EU, and NATO might appear as imperialistic. ²⁵ In this sense some scholars see CEE as the victim of colonization. Yet, other scholars see the region as insufficiently recognizing its own colonial guilt. Mark and Slobodian for example reach the conclusion that ‘on the global scale, Eastern Europe’s membership (however vexed at different times) in the camp of the “white West” deserves to remain central in scholarly categories of analysis’. ²⁶ Along these lines the Estonian curator Bart Pushaw organized an exhibition to thematize some colonial and racial tendencies in Estonian history. The key example in the exhibition were the brothers Solomentsev, who joined the French and Belgian colonial project in the Congo as medical doctors. The fact that the brothers’ last name is Russian, adds a level of complexity to the case, which the exhibition did not reflect upon. Estonian society criticized the exhibition for its lack of attention to Estonia’s Soviet occupation. ²⁷ The issue is not just a stylistic matter of framing for ‘PR purposes’. It is rather about identifying the correct vocabulary that reflects the complexity of the subject positionings of people who are neither fully core, nor fully periphery. The in-betweenness requires its own theoretical framing that does not lean on the theoretical apparatus of colonialism and post-coloniality, because that apparatus does not fit.

The concept of liminality defines identities and subject positions that are on the threshold of core and periphery. ²⁸ In Latin the term limes signified the frontier between the Roman Empire and the uncivilized world. In IR liminality scholars took inspiration from anthropology, where liminality refers to rites of passage. It signifies a temporal stage of in-betweenness marked by ritual performances, and indicates the threshold between two live-stages. ²⁹ It is a period of ambiguity and transition. ³⁰ For example, Romania was a part of the Ottoman empire, but sought to liberate itself from that positioning, and become a part of Europe. ³¹ It defined itself geographically as a step between Europe and Asia, and temporally on the move to Europe. This temporal dimension also played an important role in the accession process to the EU. Typical liminals are Turkey, Russia and the states of CEE.

Thus far liminality scholarship advanced liminality as an identitarian category, that emerges from elite discourses. Usually the focus was on foreign policy and on how the state and nation are positioned internationally vis-à-vis external others. ³² Here I propose to add two components. First, liminals want to be somewhere else, and therefore they have to change their domestic structures. Their economies and societies are transitioning, perhaps perpetually so. Second, liminal identities typically exist in countries positioned in the semi-periphery. Perhaps liminality and semi-periphery are not entirely co-constituted, but they mutually condition each other.

The structural features of CEE: liminality, transitions, semi-periphery

Dominant conceptualizations in IR do not render the CEE region very intelligible, also when it comes to its positioning towards climate change. To explain CEE countries’ tendency to be climate change laggards in the European context, I propose a structural theorization of the region based on an identity of liminality, the domestic dynamics of transitioning and a semi-peripheral economic position. Such an analysis adds a macro-perspective to the growing environmental literature on CEE.

Liminal identities

Even before the Cold War ended, CEE dissidents like Milan Kundera sought to redefine the region’s geographical positioning, and thereby also its role on the European continent. ³³ Countries in the region wanted to eschew their Eastern European identity and therefore propagated a discourse that positioned them in Central Europe. For each of the countries Eastern Europe started on their Eastern border. Eastern othering is a practice that leads to highly flexible, continuously shifting geographical markers. After the Cold War the East is no longer ‘a fixed location but a characteristic (East Europeanness) attributed differently in different circumstances’. ³⁴ As their mirror image, these same discursive practices also transform Central Europe into a fluid, ambiguous space. ³⁵ They manifest the difficulties to generate new substantive geographies for the region. ³⁶ With fluid geographies come fluid identities.

After the fall of Communism the CEE countries raised their desire to ‘return’ to Europe, which full membership in the EU, NATO and the OECD were supposed to cement. ³⁷ The countries expressed some disappointment once they realized that their accession would take time, and that it was bound to them meeting political, legal and economic adjustment criteria. Acquiring EU membership was framed as a ‘process of Europeanisation’, ³⁸ where former communist states get socialized into Western civilization. ³⁹ The discourse of a return to Europe suggests that CEE is aspiring to become Western Europe, but is not quite there yet. CEE is neither Western Europe (not the North), nor is it an external other (not the South). It is caught mid-way in the process of becoming European. An independent subjecthood gets denied. The relationship was asymmetric. CEE countries were apprentices, who had to learn to behave appropriately. ⁴⁰ The institution of candidacy permitted the EU to maintain its superior position of instructor. CEE’s progress towards the ideal was measured with the Copenhagen criteria. And by and large CEE countries presented themselves ‘as industrious students’ demonstrating their progress towards meeting the required targets. ⁴¹ The possibility that the EU and its member states could perhaps also learn something from the CEE countries was not considered.

The acceding states accepted this positioning with the tacit assumption that once they would become EU member states, they would become equal partners. Liminality and transitioning would end. Yet, even after accession the discourse of the CEE apprentices, who had to learn to behave appropriately kept returning. ⁴² For example, when the CEE countries supported the US invasion of Iraq, a frustrated Jacques Chirac told them that they first had to understand how the EU works, without making similar comments to the UK or Spain, who equally supported the invasion. ⁴³ Such attitudes generated a sense of frustration as well as a feeling of inferiority, perhaps in equal measures. For example in 2012 then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated ‘It is in the interest of Warsaw that Brussels does not treat the “new countries” of the Community as younger, poor brothers, and does not discipline them like school kids, when - in its opinion - they are starting to depart from European values’. ⁴⁴

The EU’s chastisements have enhanced a second dynamic that has animated CEE countries since the fall of the iron curtain. Next to a desire to ‘return to Europe’, they also sought to strengthen their national sovereignty after Soviet occupation, and often preceding German occupation. ⁴⁵ The historical concern about a threatened nation-state means that national-conservative trends are strong in CEE societies. Sentiments of defiance against Brussels’s schooling tendencies can be expressed vehemently, such as in Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán’s statement: ‘When Poland is attacked from Brussels, the attack is against the whole of Central Europe – and us Hungarians. (. . .) Empire-builders (. . .) seek to cast their shadow over Central Europe. . .’. ⁴⁶

The two foreign policy concerns, wanting to be a part of the West and wanting to secure hard-won national sovereignty, have regularly come in conflict with one another. These contradictory tendencies are the direct result of a liminal position in-between the global South and the global North. Depending on party composition, governments have responded to these clashes differently. Many centre-right and centre-left governments have teeth grindingly accepted EU regulations, while seeking to obtain concessions for their national circumstances. Although they occasionally throw temper tantrums, typically they accept EU chastisements with a bowed head. By contrast, populist leaders are defiant. Not to comply with EU regulations is a way to assert national identity. ⁴⁷ Thus Poland took the EU to the European Court of Justice in 2023, with the claim that ‘the EU’s recently adopted climate legislation was not properly assessed, exceeded Brussels’s authority and now threatens Poland’s economy as well as energy security’. ⁴⁸

Climate change mitigation policies appear as externally imposed dictates. In the words of Bulgaria’s Minister of the Environment ‘Central and Eastern European countries don’t feel they have been involved in the development of the climate agenda and they resist it instinctively’. ⁴⁹ The promotion of renewable energy sources seems like another instance in which the EU is treating CEE countries as apprentices, who now have to learn to produce their energy adequately. ⁵⁰ A series of environmental development initiatives in Romania and Hungary failed, because local communities experienced them as foreign and patronising. ⁵¹

CEE countries have responded to climate change mitigation initiatives along the lines of either of the two logics described above. Establishment governments have accepted some environmental EU legislation, but not without seeking to water it down. The preferred approach to meet CO₂ emissions targets is with nuclear energy, and gas. As Czech Prime Minister Fiala stated ‘large-scale decarbonisation requires the gradual harmonisation of international nuclear standards. We need fair funding and research support’. ⁵²

Populist leaders are more defiant. Thus Jaroslaw Kaczynski, at the time Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and leader of the governing PiS party, stated ‘at least some of this so-called green policy is madness and, in other cases, [is] theories without evidence [. . .] it cannot be said that Europe, which emits 8% of gases, changes the climate’. ⁵³ Similar climate change scepticism is increasingly aired on Hungarian state media. ⁵⁴ Slovakia’s nationalist-populist government sought to appoint a notorious climate change denier as Minister of the Environment. The Slovak president blocked his nomination, only for the government to appoint a slightly less notorious climate change denier instead. ⁵⁵

Self-sufficiency in terms of energy production plays an important role in populist leaders’ conceptions of national sovereignty. ⁵⁶ In Kaczynski’s words ‘What the left-liberal majority in the European Parliament is doing, guided solely by ideological rationales, is green communism, a desire to impose a new lifestyle that will benefit the richest countries, the richest Europeans, and new business sectors at the expense of the poorer ones, above all from our part of Europe’. ⁵⁷ CEE countries want to be energy independent as an expression of national strength. ⁵⁸ In Bulgaria energy and its coal-fired power plants became a crucial theme in the 2023 election, due to the energy crisis resulting from the war in Ukraine. ⁵⁹

In sum, CEE countries have adopted two approaches to climate change mitigation, either outright resistance, or lukewarm adoption. The two approaches are partly in contradiction to one another, because CEE’s ambiguous position in-between the global North and the global South does not provide for an unequivocal solution. If CEE countries want to become a part of the West, they have to develop convincing climate change mitigation policies, but if they are different from the West, they might want to ensure their independence, and reject apparent ecological dictates from Brussels. Beyond these identitarian dynamics, the reasons for the perceived alienness of climate change mitigation policies are also located in domestic societal dynamics, and CEE countries’ economic structure.

Transitioning from communism

The liminal identity combines with people’s personal experiences of upheaval following the transition from communism and generates a sense of disorientation in the population. ⁶⁰ To ‘return to Europe’ CEE societies decided to transform themselves into liberal market democracies. To this day these transformation dynamics are not complete, and so CEE countries are stuck somewhere in-between. They are quite far removed from the communist authoritarian regimes they once were, but they have not reached the destination of stable liberal market democracies. In-betweenness is their defining feature, also in terms of the domestic institutional environment. The future appears uncertain, familiar societal patterns no longer hold, and the sense of one’s own and national self is blurry. ⁶¹ These experiences, together with the experiences from the communist past resulted in an overall disengagement from public matters, a withdrawal into the private sphere. While interpersonal direct ties are close and proximate, general conceptions of the public good are weak.

The communist regimes, together with the transition dynamics had profound effects on civil society. Given centralization and forceful impositions, the various communist regimes in CEE bore remarkable ideological and institutional similarities, although minor differences did exist. ⁶² During state-socialism every public activity was state-organized, and politicized under the leadership of one single party, the front of national unity. ⁶³ The regime periodically required people to publicly express adoration for the communist cause. On special occasions people had to put flags on their windows, march in processions or sing national anthems. Not obliging with these ritualistic requirements appeared as a political expression of resistance, which could result in job losses and other consequences. ⁶⁴

Many people felt forced to express themselves in the public sphere in ways that went against their convictions. ⁶⁵ Even silence could appear as an act of resistance. Only active, positive support was permitted. Many depoliticized. A certain emotional detachment from the public sphere and a degree of cynicism about all public and political matters resulted from these dynamics. Private relations, by contrast became all the more vibrant. ⁶⁶ People had to trust each other to be able to speak frankly, which bonded them more closely together. ⁶⁷ People had to rely on each other to obtain scarce goods and protect each other’s backs. In the economy informal ties and alliances developed for actors to obtain privileges from the central state apparatus. ⁶⁸

A stark separation of the public and the private spheres emerged, with the establishment of a double moral standard. General diffuse reciprocity towards society at large was weakly developed, while specific reciprocity towards individual family members and friends was strong. ⁶⁹ To this day levels of trust to strangers and public institutions are low, while connections to friends and family are tight. ⁷⁰

The resistance movements that led to the collapse of communism between 1989 and 1991 appear to contradict the claims of a weak civil society. Yet, these mobilizations occurred through private networks and inter-personal ties. They are ‘based on identification and solidarity in informal groups, which during upheaval becomes a base of collective expression’. ⁷¹ The memory of these events, as well as the continuation of those connections form a resource on which today’s resistance movements can rely in times of need to form broad, informal, highly dynamic, but also relatively fleeting dissent. ⁷² When CEE therefore cannot rely on higher moral principles, of either some sort of civilizational superiority, as the North does, or emancipatory struggles, as in the South, it can still rely on concrete personal bonds of friendship, and sometimes it can mobilize the memory of dissent.

Much scholarship studies how the people who were at the forefront of the dissident movements quickly stepped into the background, and a technocratic, neoliberal approach took over to develop liberal market-based economies. ⁷³ The central component in the transition was the privatization of state-owned property. It was disorderly and rapid. ⁷⁴ Mid-level management profited the most from privatization, as those were the people who had an information monopoly on the company assets that had to be privatized. ⁷⁵ The previously existing particularistic ties were not eliminated with the onset of privatisation, but rather continued to operate in slightly different forms. ⁷⁶ Meanwhile the majority of the population experienced a rapid decrease in living standards following the adoption of ‘shock therapy’ to marketize the socialist economies. ⁷⁷

The dynamics of privatization were partly a consequence of the devaluation of the public sphere and the sacralization of the private sphere, but they also further amplified this distinction. ⁷⁸ The communist past and the transition mean that the citizenry has a passive, and estranged approach to politics. ⁷⁹ Politicians and parties are generally disliked. ⁸⁰ Empirical research indicates that even voters of the radical right show little political engagement and are rather apathetic. ⁸¹

In the early 1990s state-organized forms of social activities broke down. New organizations, often supported by external funding burst onto the stage, and the sector might appear vibrant. ⁸² The quantity of organizations is not proportionate though, to populations’ engagement in these organizations. ⁸³ Connections to the population at large are weak. NGOs are perceived as elitist, alien and nepotistic. ⁸⁴ Grass roots organizations emerge rarely. Only a small section of urban, well-educated citizens actively engages in their work. ⁸⁵ ‘The literature on civil society in Central and Eastern Europe hints towards inherent weaknesses in terms of low and further weakening organisational membership, mobilization power, growing individualism and apathy of CEE citizens, and lack of institutional and interpersonal trust’. ⁸⁶ Between the North’s schooling tendencies and the South’s upheaval, citizens in the East are a bit lost, and mostly quiet.

Civil society has taken a further hit with the election of populist leaders in numerous CEE countries. Many scholars explain populism’s success with the difficulties resulting from the transition. ⁸⁷ For example, Ost argues that in Poland economic deprivation, and uncertainty about the future, led to workers’ anger. ⁸⁸ Political elites were hesitant to express that anger along class lines, because the collapse of communism had discredited class rhetoric. Liberals sought to supress the anger, whereas conservatives channelled it into a nationalist rhetoric. Tismaneau links the rise of populism to the ontological and ideological insecurities that resulted from the collapse of communism, the transition and liminality. ⁸⁹

Populist leaders sought to undermine NGOs, and the space for public debate domestically. ⁹⁰ In some cases, like Hungary, civil society has taken a significant hit. ⁹¹ In other cases, such as Poland, this has meant a revitalization of civil society. Resistance against the PiS government rose through informal networks and personal ties, taking inspiration from the Solidarnost legacy of the 1980s, and in 2023 the PiS government was elected out of power. ⁹²

The general tendencies discussed thus far found reflection in the dynamics of environmental movements. During the 1970s and 1980s the environmental damages resulting from heavy industry and mining were felt with bare human senses and dramatically impacted people’s quality of life. ⁹³ The state had to respond, and did so in two ways. One was to establish local community initiatives to preserve historical and environmental sites, like the nineteenth century romanticist movements did. ⁹⁴ This approach focussed on the embeddedness of the individual in her concrete environment. The other response was to invest into research into local environmental issues like water and air pollution, and adopt environmental legislation, but which was barely ever enforced. ⁹⁵ In CEE environmental concerns were linked to people’s immediate habitats. The limits to growth theory and other systemic perspectives circulating in the West were perceived as capitalist propaganda intended to destroy the socialist system. Even with a local environmental approach, to the extent that environmental protection came into conflict with heavy industry, infrastructure or mining developments, the state prioritized the latter.

With socialist regimes’ ineffectiveness to respond to rapid environmental degradation, ‘ecological critique played a key role in the process of delegitimating state socialism’. ⁹⁶ In some cases, like the Danube circle in Hungary, environmental causes even served as the rallying call for the entire resistance movement. ⁹⁷ In line with a focus on particularistic relationships, environmental concerns were perceived as local, concrete issues impacting people’s immediate livelihoods. Preserving the environment as the spaces people lived in went hand-in-glove with the preservation of specific historical sites. For example, the Danube circle’s objective was to stop the construction of the joint Slovak and Hungarian Gabčíkovo-Nagymáros dam for hydropower generation to prevent the flooding of villages and ecological sites. ⁹⁸ Other movements similarly focussed on specific projects, ranging from protests against the construction of power plants, over the protection of parks, to the removal of radioactive waste, and the closure of chemical factories. ⁹⁹ A broader systemic concern for environmental matters existed to the extent that there was a perception that ecological damage was the result of central planning, and the introduction of capitalism and market economies would automatically solve the crisis. ¹⁰⁰

The 1989–1991 years carried hopes that environmental issues would be central on the new democracies’ agenda, given their prominence in bringing the communist regimes to a fall. Enthusiasm prevailed and many environmental activists saw themselves in governmental posts. ¹⁰¹ New participatory institutions were created, such as a green parliament in Czechoslovakia which brought environmental activists together with employees of the Ministry of the Environment to discuss draft environmental legislation. ¹⁰² Yet, the environmental movement quickly ran out of steam. Only a few dozen people attended demonstrations. Those who were in positions of power lost their posts with the onset of a neoliberal agenda of marketization. In other cases, like Hungary and Bulgaria, they were coopted into the transition dynamics. ¹⁰³ Environmental issues no longer were a popular topic in society at large, green parties only have marginal support. ¹⁰⁴

The environmental agenda got sidelined. In the Czech Republic the Ministry of the Interior put environmental NGOs like Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth on the list of extremist organizations in 1995. ¹⁰⁵ Ecological activities became stigmatized. Many environmental institutions together with their expert knowledge were dismantled. In Hungary, the Fidesz government integrated the Ministry of the Environment into the Ministry of Agriculture, its staff was cut, and its budget dwindled. ¹⁰⁶

The mobilization potential for climate change is small in CEE. CEE populations are less inclined to make sacrifices for environmental protection, although they are more aware of environmental threats than populations in Western Europe—perhaps because of their environment’s overall worse condition. ¹⁰⁷ In the Czech Republic for example 59% of opinion poll respondents expressed their continued support for coal extraction, while 18% thought coal should get phased out as soon as possible and 11% thought coal extraction should increase. ¹⁰⁸ The Climate Protest Tracker, which launched in 2022 only found a total of three climate protests in CEE, which were all in opposition, rather than in favour of climate action. Many of the transnational rallies for the climate, such as Fridays for Futures’ climate marches did not reach significant response rates. ¹⁰⁹

Thematizing concrete and local environmental concerns as the resistance movements in the 1980s did, has a higher likelihood of generating public support. For example, to the extent that resistance to coal mining exists in the Czech Republic and Poland, municipal actors in the locations of the mines, with sporadic transnational support, are its driving forces. ¹¹⁰

Unfortunately a local gaze on a pure, pristine countryside also carries the potential to be misused by actors on the far right. A quote from the current Slovak Minister of the Environment, Tomáš Taraba’s website suggests as much: ‘we want to protect nature, we want real environmental protection that will help the Slovak countryside and prevent the destruction of Slovak industry and agriculture. Financial resources must primarily go towards nature conservation, not into ancillary activities that are not directly related to environmental protection’. ¹¹¹ A similar ecological nationalism exists in Romania, where the focus is on protecting Romania’s pristine mountains, as a symbol of nationalism that belongs to the ethnic people. ¹¹²

Semi-peripheral economic relations

A semi-peripheral economic position is the material counter-part to a liminal identity. While CEE countries have significantly higher levels of GDP per capita than the global South, unlike the global North, they are heavily dependent on foreign capital. CEE’s semi-peripheral economic position is directly related to the domestic dynamics of transitioning from communism. The communist regimes promoted a strong focus on heavy industry, and CEE’s comparative advantage continues to be in labour and resource intensive industries. In the processes of privatisation foreign capital bought up many local industries. This also means that important economic decisions are made abroad. Tax breaks result in shrinking funds for education so that indigenous research and development are stagnating. These features are due to an economic dependence, but they are also reflected in perceptions of intellectual and identitarian inferiority linked to liminality.

The communist regime and the particularities of central planning shaped economic structures in unique ways. Central planning concentrated on resource intensive heavy industries under inefficient energy usages due to heavy price subsidies. ¹¹³ Developing an industrial, proletarian society was the very identity these regimes were founded on. Their legitimacy relied on consistent increases in industrial production, quality considerations were secondary. Environmental degradation and deteriorations in human health were the result of the dictate of production. ¹¹⁴ Acid rain destroyed forests, water was polluted with chemicals. In the late 1980s CEE was ‘undoubtedly the most polluted area in the industrial world, with East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and some areas of Poland on the verge of ecological disaster’. ¹¹⁵ Environmental quality markedly improved in the 1990s, even as the legacies of industrial development continue into the present.

CEE countries transitioned to a capitalist economy. Comparative political economists analyse the region with the Varieties of Capitalism framework. ¹¹⁶ To acknowledge the distinct features of post-communist countries scholars have developed models that are particular to CEE; they call them Dependent Market Economies. ¹¹⁷ The argument is that CEE countries form a distinct category of capitalist economies, whose primary feature is that they are heavily dependent on foreign capital.

The Dependent Market Economies approach emphasizes the semi-peripheral positioning of CEE countries. Following privatisation CEE economies became dependent on foreign investments, given that domestic stock markets and the banking system were underdeveloped. ¹¹⁸ Foreign Direct Investment is the most important source of capital, but also in the banking sector foreign ownership dominates. CEE countries have consistently had annual FDI inflows of around 3%–4% of GDP, so that their total FDI stock currently amounts to 40%–100% of GDP. ¹¹⁹ With a few exceptions they tend to have higher FDI stocks in relation to GDP than the other EU member states. ¹²⁰ This means that the major investment decisions are made abroad, in Western Europe and the United States. The central coordination mechanism are the negotiations between the headquarters of Transnational Corporations and the managers in the CEE subsidiaries. ¹²¹ The major comparative advantage of CEE economies resides in the production of durable consumer goods, such as cars, due to the abundance of relatively skilled and cheap labour, as well as a strong industrial base.

The innovation and the research and development required for the production of such goods is imported from abroad, the headquarters of the companies who own the production facilities. TNCs obtain tax breaks, which lower available public finance to invest into public education, and the TNCs themselves do not invest into a generous education system. ¹²² In the EU CEE governments provided in 2020 615 euros per capita to educational institutions, compared to 1909 euros per capita for the other EU member states. ¹²³ The science and education base are not robust in CEE. The countries experience an educational crisis, which leads to a lack of highly skilled labour. ¹²⁴ The number of domestic patents is low, as is Research and Development intensity. CEE countries have 76% less patent applications per inhabitant than the remainder of the EU. ¹²⁵

All of these characteristics suggest that CEE economies are more rigid, less adaptable to changing circumstances, and not much in control of their own fate. High levels of heavy industry mean that CO₂ emissions are from the outset high, and lowering them generates formidable challenges. With one tonne of CO₂ emissions Western Europe can generate on average almost double the value of GDP compared to CEE economies. ¹²⁶ The additional capture of political power by private economic interests, ¹²⁷ means that the state has limited capacities to adopt a coordinated approach for the transition to a low-carbon economy. State responses tend to be reactive. The deterioration of educational levels results in a lack of technological know-how needed for developing indigenous technologies for CO₂ reductions. Any import of such technologies from abroad can be perceived as an external imposition. Overall scholars have argued that ‘the DME model has produced dysfunctional patterns in promoting new low-carbon technologies’. ¹²⁸

Reducing CO₂ emissions requires fundamental changes in production patterns. In this regard CEE countries have seen some improvements, they have for example increased the share of renewable energy sources in the overall energy composition. However, these increases have been largely driven by the need to meet national targets stipulated in EU regulations. ¹²⁹ They have typically occurred as one-off shots, rather than as sustainable trends. As soon as the targets have been met, countries reverted to their previous strategies. ¹³⁰ For example, most solar power capacity was installed during a single year, 2010 in the Czech Republic, 2011 in Slovakia, 2012 in Bulgaria and 2013–14 in Romania. Few additional capacities were developed thereafter. ¹³¹ Similar trends apply to wind power in Bulgaria and Romania; only Poland has a more sustained increase in wind energy. The European Commission identifies a lack of strategic planning in the form of the ‘slow development of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs)’ as a key reason for why CEE ‘countries have lagged behind in meeting the EU’s climate goals compared with Western Europe’. ¹³² CEE countries’ natural renewable energy sources are underutilized. In some instances CEE countries have adopted legislation that directly inhibits the development of renewable energies. The Hungarian government for example forbids the installation of wind turbines and unutilized energy from solar panels is not allowed to be fed back into the national electricity grid. ¹³³ Negative experiences with renewable energy policies’ implementation can partly explain the phenomenon. ¹³⁴ Foreign investors have been able to profit from EU energy policy, while domestic companies and citizens have not been much involved in the initiatives. ¹³⁵ Cases of corruption also marred the implementation.

In the energy sector many electricity companies remain state-owned, and they typically focus on fossil fuel generated electricity. The Polish state-owned coal-fired power station in Belchatow is the heaviest emitter in the EU ETS. ¹³⁶ In Poland energy production from coal is more expensive than current market prices, and the companies have to be subsidized through taxation. Although economic incentives for innovation are high, the structural economic difficulties to act upon these incentives are also quite formidable. Massive sums of investments are required, and CEE countries consistently demand more financial resources from Western Europe to cover the energy transition. ¹³⁷ CEE governments adopt a conservative approach in climate change negotiations; they are concerned about rapid changes to which their economies are unable to adjust.

Conclusion

This paper has developed a structural understanding of the CEE region, which delineates the region as a unique space with specific characteristics that are distinct from the global North and the global South. The region is marked by a liminal identity, domestic dynamics of transitioning, and an economic position in the semi-periphery. These three characteristics mutually influence one another. They explain why the countries in the region are usually laggards when it comes to adopting climate change mitigation policies.

Existing and past relational dynamics in the EU result in the perception that climate change mitigation policies are externally imposed, rather than domestically generated. These perceptions are further exasperated by a lack of domestic environmental civil society initiatives due to a relatively politically disengaged citizenry that values direct reciprocity to familiar peers over diffuse reciprocity in terms of which the protection of the global commons is framed. The characteristic features of the economies in terms of resource intensive industrial production with a lack of technological innovation and know-how mean that governments feel overwhelmed to change the economic structure to more climate friendly modes of production.

In more general terms this paper has demonstrated how combining the peculiar domestic and international-level dynamics individual regions face generates a deeper understanding of those countries’ negotiating positions on climate related issues. It can then be possible to design better policies to mitigate climate change. A key component for improvement is that these states and communities need to experience ownership over the policies that get developed. Awakening indigenous initiatives, and explicitly drawing on indigenous traditions to generate two-way transfers of knowledges and practices can help. For example, in the CEE region widespread practices like gardening, and food foraging, as well as a culture of home production and self-repair, are positive legacies from the communist past. ¹³⁸ They proliferated in economies marked by scarcities. In the West they can provide know-how for ecological lifestyle choices. Developing civic engagement on the basis of direct personal ties and places, and with the historical memory of previous dissident movements can be another path to awaken the East.

Supplemental Material

sj-xlsx-1-ire-10.1177_00471178241268255 – Supplemental material for The North-South divide and everything that gets left out in-between: conceptualizing Central and Eastern Europe to explain its positioning on climate change

Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-1-ire-10.1177_00471178241268255 for The North-South divide and everything that gets left out in-between: conceptualizing Central and Eastern Europe to explain its positioning on climate change by Alena Drieschova in International Relations