Most inspiringly of all, as Kiev’s “Euromaidan” protests showed, western Europe has become a beacon to less happy countries. The post-communist era could have gone horribly wrong. After 1989, eastern Europe’s ex-communist countries could choose among various models to follow – including some nasty populist ones. Few of these countries had a democratic tradition. But those closest to the EU chose the European model. From 1995 to 2013, the world’s fastest-growing middle-income economies were the Baltic states, Poland and Slovakia, says Marcin Piatkowski, the World Bank’s senior economist in Warsaw. These countries grew faster even than South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. That was mostly because they looked at the EU, saw what they wanted to be and set about getting there fast. They copied European laws, and got billions in EU funds after joining the union in 2004. Now Europe can inspire Ukraine, Tunisia and Turkey after Erdogan.
