The Mass Media, Political Parties, and Europessimism in Hungary

There is a widespread and long-standing belief that the European Union consists of two, often antagonistic sets of member-states: the large and powerful members and their smaller and less powerful counterparts. The debate regarding the relationship between small and large states within the EU began long before the latest enlargement, in 2004, which extended EU membership to a number of former Eastern bloc countries, including Hungary. There are those who believe that larger states, such as Germany and France, by virtue of sheer economic and geographic size exercise dominant influence in the EU. William Wallace, for instance, notes that "without institutional constraints, large states may concert their interests at the expense of smaller states around their borders, or pursue regional hegemony at small state expense."¹

This has led smaller members to feel that they are treated as second-class citizens by the larger and wealthier EU partners. The feeling is even more pervasive among the new, economically less-developed states whose neophyte political institutions do not have the experience and clout to compete with their more consolidated and politically savvy Western counterparts. As a result, observers have detected a creeping sense of "europessimism" sweeping the citizens of these member-states. Europessimism refers to a feeling that a big-state-dominated EU is not a fair and proper environment for the future of smaller and less wealthy states. In other words, europessimists doubt the capacity of the EU edifice to evolve into an environment that would be both lasting and beneficial to smaller members. By contrast, "euroskepticism" emanates from a distaste for the bureaucratic and bloated European Commission structure in Brussels and the centralizing it advocates.

The latest and largest round of enlargement in 2004, when ten new countries became EU members, illustrates this view. With the exception of Poland, the newcomers are not only small states but by and large they are economically less developed. A climate of quiet but widespread ambivalence toward European institutions seemed to have pervaded the attitudes of political elites and citizens during accession negotiations. The hope of Eastern Europeans to catch up with the richer member-states of the EU went parallel with feelings of uncertainty about their own future as EU members. Wallace detected similar sentiments among the fifteen existing EU member-states. He notes that "the tensions between cosmopolitan elites and domestic mass publics, between expert insiders and suspicious outsiders, are arguably higher within small states—certainly within small states which see themselves on the EU's periphery, their interests and identity threatened by collusion among the great powers."² Under such conditions, ambivalence evolves into europessimism.

As a small state, Hungary's experience exemplifies ambivalence turned europessimism toward the EU. The argument that I advance and analyze in this essay is that the mass media and political parties in Hungary have helped create a sense of europessimism in that country. I illustrate the nature and evolution of europessimism in Hungary, assess the role of the mass media and political parties in its development, and offer a tentative balance sheet of the status of europessimism since Hungary became an EU member in May 2004.

Hungary Yearns for Membership

On 1 May 2004, Hungary joined the EU along with seven other former Eastern bloc countries, Cyprus, and Malta. Fifteen years before, during the political transition and a change of regime, Hungarians' desire to become part of the well-developed Western democratic political community enjoyed widespread and enthusiastic support from all levels of society. Similar sentiments prevailed in neighboring Central European countries. The "soft" communist dictatorship that governed Hungary for more than two decades allowed the country's new political elites to emphasize Hungary's Western orientation and roots and strive to reestablish old ties with more developed countries in Europe and beyond.

But in the eyes of many Hungarian citizens, the 1990s brought a painful adjustment to the world of market economies and a distorted domestic political agenda with unexpectedly shrill levels of competition among the nation's newly emerged political parties. Such developments spawned public disillusionment and stimulated in political...