With the 1 May 2004 accession of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia (along with six other countries) to full membership in the European Union, Rusyns throughout Europe find themselves in an awkward position. Though Poland and Slovakia have substantial Rusyn populations, the number of Rusyns in the Czech Republic and Hungary is not high, and more Rusyns live outside the borders of the EU, in Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and Ukraine – mostly in Ukraine.

It is hard to say exactly what the EU will bring to the Rusyns in the long term. For now, the only thing that is clear is that the Rusyns are an official minority of the EU, and the Rusyn language is among the EU’s regional and minority languages. This offers significant protection to the group and its language, and carries with heightened prestige.

In terms of practical benefits, however, everything is up in the air. It is hard to imagine that Rusyns will not be able to reap benefits stemming from their countries’ stronger economies and more secure places in Europe, as well as from EU programs designed to aid lesser-developed regions in EU member states. And even those Rusyns living in states just across the EU’s borders do stand to reap benefits from their neighbors’ membership in the long term.

Those countries outside the EU’s borders are facing significant problems already, and the fact that the Rusyn homeland now straddles the EU’s borders means that the Rusyns on both sides of the divide are affected.

Though EU expansion should help the economies of the new members, it will hurt the economies of the excluded states drastically. According to Russian press agency Itar-Tass, Ukraine stands to lose USD 250-350 million annually in the next few years as a result of EU expansion. On the other hand, tariffs on Ukrainian goods will drop by 3.5 percent, and trade should increase dramatically in the coming years which will mitigate the negative affects.

According to Serbian Minister of International Economic Relations Predrag Bubalo, Serbia stands to gain from EU expansion as well, even though his country is not among the new members. Though he did acknowledge that there will also be negative effects, Bubalo stressed the positives in a recent speech. He pointed out that “Serbia stands to benefit from the fact that some foreign companies will seek to move their facilities and capital from the ten EU newcomers, due to changed business conditions after their accession.” Cheaper labor and other lower expenses explain “why some facilities will be moved from Hungary to countries outside the EU borders, particularly to Serbia as the nearest one,” according to Bubalo.

The biggest immediate problem is the fact that the outside border of the EU has been tightened significantly, and when the new members take on the EU’s Schengen border regime, border controls will be virtually impenetrable. For the Rusyns and many others living along both sides of the borders, this is nothing less than tragic.

Firstly, families living on either side of the new EU border face huge restrictions on their movement. Those living along the Polish-Ukrainian border are among the lucky ones. Poland only introduced visas for Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian citizens in October 2003, and now with Poland as a member of the EU, Ukrainians are able to get free visas from the Polish consulate and Poles can go to Ukraine visa-free. Along the Slovak-Ukrainian border, visas were not necessary until June 2000. Slovakia is only allowing free visas to ethnic Slovaks in Transcarpathia. Everyone else, along with those living elsewhere along the EU border may face high visa costs which will inhibit their visiting EU states.

The tightened border controls are also putting the skids to much of the informal economy along the new EU border. According to Radio Netherlands, 6000 pedestrians cross the border at Medyka into Poland from Ukraine every day. These are mostly poor people who make their livings smuggling cigarettes and liquor. Border guards confiscate nearly 10,000 packs of cigarettes each day at just the Medyka crossing. And it’s not just the smugglers who now face a severe cut in their income, but also middlemen in the new EU member states, and even the public who purchased the cheap goods.

The EU will probably not affect the life of the Rusyn national community in the new member states very much at all. One way that the EU will be felt, however, is through investment by Brussels in lesser-developed regions of the EU. For example, Brussels will give 1.7 billion euros to Bratislava for development projects, or 105 euro per capita. Warsaw will get 67 euro per capita, and Budapest 49. In Slovakia, the money is earmarked for development in the Prešov and Košice regions, home to most of Slovakia’s Rusyns. According to Natalia Tarasovova, director of the Prešov regional office in Brussels, “19 major projects for repairing schools, hospitals, cultural, [and] social care buildings” have been submitted for approval. If all are accepted, they would be worth over 12 million euro.

Through its European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages and various treaties and agreements, the EU should play a key role in promoting the Rusyn language – as well as the Ukrainian language – in the member states where it is recognized. More likely, however, is that it will not make the situation any better than it already is. Language expert Tove Skutnabb-Kanagas recently told Eurolang, the news service of the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages:

In a comparison in 2001 I looked at which countries had signed and ratified both international and European language and minority related human rights instruments, for instance the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The accession countries were either at the same level or better than the then EU member countries. And they were doing better than the EU countries in several aspects of implementation. There is a lot of hypocrisy in the "old" EU countries which have consistently demanded more of the "new" countries than they have been willing to do themselves.

To date, the Czech Republic, Malta and Poland have signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Cyprus have ratified the Charter. The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities has been signed by Latvia and has been ratified by all the others.

Regardless of the protection, however, the Rusyn language will likely come under fire from the spread of English, perhaps more so than it already has in the new member states. English was already the most common second language within the old EU, and spoken by more people than any other single language. The EU’s public opinion poll Eurobarometer recently found that some 47% of the EU’s citizens speak English as either a first or second language, and that figure is likely to rise when the new member states are included.

Speaking to the Slovak Spectator in February, historian Alexander Mušinka also predicted little change for the Rusyns of Slovakia after EU entry:

Whether or not EU entry will bring about any developments for the [Rusyn] issue is a big question mark. I would probably say any drastic change is unlikely. Pragmatically speaking, the [Rusyns] really are in between two structures and the main part of the [Rusyn] cultural foundation is found in the sub-Carpathian area, in western Ukraine, which will be beyond the Schengen frontier. So, communication will be problematic. I don't think that EU entry will facilitate communication between Slovak [Rusyns] and Ukrainian [Rusyns]. The question is what the communication will be like between Slovakia and Ukraine.

More Rusyns will join the EU when Croatia and Romania become members, perhaps in 2007, but it does not look like Ukraine – home to the largest number of Rusyns in Europe – will be joining any time soon. And so the Rusyns are likely to remain a nation divided by borders for years to come.