, Columnist
How Western Capital Colonized Eastern Europe
Populist politicians are too late with their nationalist messages.
The East's populists.
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Yet another Eastern European country is about to get a populist, anti-immigration, euroskeptic government: Billionaire Andrej Babis's ANO party enjoys a wide poll lead ahead of the October parliamentary election in the Czech Republic. The central European country would join Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. If that sounds ominous, there is at least one bulwark against extremism in the region: Western European capital.
Indeed, Western investment plays such an important role in economies of all these countries that nationalist politicians make their countries look more like truculent colonies than partners in a grand integration project.