accession process has interacted with transition and the legacy of 1989 will be analysed
through looking at national parliaments and political parties in CEE.
2.1 Public Disengagement in CEE Politics
As was mentioned above, the rhetoric of enlargement has been about assisting CEE states
in assuming their role as independent actors in European politics. EU membership was,
above all, a means of giving CEE states a voice. Yet, this emphasis on inclusion is
difficult to reconcile with the growing public disenchantment with political elites and
institutions that has been witnessed in CEE in recent years. Various indicators, such as
Eurobarometer polls, illustrate this trend. Trust in domestic political institutions, for
example, is very low in CEE states. The table below shows an average of the responses
given to whether or not people trusted their national governments, national parliaments,
civil services and political parties.
TABLE 1: Trust in domestic political institutions
Country
Trust in domestic political institutions
(average of responses to questions on
each of the 4 institutions)
Estonia
38%
Hungary
32%
Latvia
30%
Slovenia
28%
Lithuania
26%
Czech Republic
23%
Slovakia
21%
Poland
15%
Average
27%
Source: EU Barometer Survey Autumn Full Report 2003
The following table gives a breakdown of how the different institutions fare in the public
esteem. The comparison is between the EU-15 i.e. the fifteen member states prior to May
2004, and the CC-13 i.e. the thirteen candidate states in 2003, which includes the ten new
member states, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. The negative number suggests a negative
response to the question of whether the respondent trusted an institution, a positive
number indicates a positive response. Interestingly, the levels of public disaffection in
Convention