No ready for the (b)east?

Lubos Palata writes in Transitions Online about how the EU offers a new deal to the countries on its eastern frontier, and an implicit challenge to Russia .In the eyes of Eastern Europeans, the European Union is a standard measure for quality – the quality of products, of democracy, of housing, of lifestyles. Not America or Japan, but Europe. Millions of Ukrainians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Belarusians dream of one day living as people do in the EU. Those who can afford it actually act on those dreams. Cities like Berlin, Vienna, Karlovy Vary and Nice are full of rich Eastern Europeans who have used the millions they made in the east to move west and live the "eurolife."

Lubos Palata is the Central and Eastern European editor for the Czech daily Lidove noviny and a contributor to the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and the German monthly German Times. He thinks that the problem is that the EU doesn't want Eastern Europe. It is already having a hard time digesting the 12 new member-states – including 10 from the post-communist regions of East-Central Europe and the Balkans – that were added to the union in recent years.

"This difficulty is evident in the rejection of the European constitution and the difficulties surrounding the Lisbon agreement"