Central Europe on the Way to Democracy
The problem which we are faced with or rather which our friends in East-Central Europe and Southeast Europe faced with is that political, economic, and social reform have different timescales and they have in part conflicting timescales. Political reforms in a purely formal sense at any rate can be introduced fairly quickly and incidentally have immediate and visible effect. Economic reform, so far as I can make out, is in any case going to take longer than one electoral cycle. Since it's going to take longer than one electoral cycle, the initial cost of economic reform will be expressed in political unrest and in considerable political difficulties. The creation of civil societies, and in many parts, it isn't a deliberate creation, but the growth of civil societies is bound to take much longer still, decades perhaps. It is a very long and complex and important process. It is a process where we have to start today, but one where we can't hope to see effective and reliable and lasting results before 10, 15, 20 years, perhaps more. This, and this is my last point, is one of the many reasons why it is so important that we try and stick together as closely as we can as between the countries of Europe and of the world.
