Thank you very much.
That's a hugely important issue. I don't think it would be exaggerating to say that it really gets to the heart of the matter. You can think globally of all the challenges the whole world seems to have faced in recent years. There's the fact of Brexit last summer, and the relative uncertainty that creates. There's the election of Donald Trump south of the border. There are the concerns we had in the lead-up to the Dutch elections about the impact of the apparent—again, it's being simplistic and sweeping—rise of populism and the uncertainty this generates in terms of political outcomes. The heart of the issue, in a sense, what you've talked about, is one of the manifestations of this broader phenomenon.
I would be quick to caution, as I think you did in your question, that obviously it differs, but the challenge with respect to NGOs in civil society is distinctive. There are very broad similarities, but the distinctions are important when we're talking about Kazakhstan, let's say, as opposed to Poland.
I'd suggest that what seems to be, or what could be suggested to be, helping to drive these steps on the part of governments, whether in Poland or in Kazakhstan, or in Hungary, as you mentioned, where the developments, as you mentioned, are extremely serious, is a kind of response to the broader uncertainties associated with an uncertain world where people are feeling dislocated. They're feeling the pernicious effects of perpetually slow growth, the difficulty for young people to find work, and the sense that those in the middle class, such as it is, whether the Kazakh version of the middle class or the Polish version, do not have the opportunities the previous generations did. It's leading governments to be really concerned about how to.... People want certainty. They want stability. That plays out in various ways in the countries you've mentioned.
Take the case of Kazakhstan. As you would have heard when you were there, relative to the other countries of central Asia, Kazakhstan is sort of the best of a challenging lot. In other words, when compared to Uzbekistan, perhaps, or Tajikistan, Nazarbayev comes out looking pretty good in terms of his commitment to engagement with the west or his efforts to improve the civil service program that Canada is participating in. However, it's still very much from the backdrop of a political culture that reflects its Soviet era origins. Ultimately there is a certain suspicion of civil society, not dissimilar to what I was saying with respect to Belarus in terms of a real preoccupation concerned with preserving stability and the limits that means one needs to put on the activities of NGOs. So that's creating the challenges in Kazakhstan.
In Poland it's really interesting, obviously. Here we have to underline that of course it's distinctive, because Poland is to all appearances a successful new member of the EU. I forget the exact statistics. You probably heard them when you were there. I think the Polish and Ukrainian per capita GDPs were not too far out of line at the time of the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Poland's might have been slightly ahead of Ukraine's, and now it's something like four or five times ahead, if not more. There are some very dramatic statistics there that underline how Poland has benefited from membership in the EU. Nevertheless, when we're trying to understand the recent steps by the PiS government in Poland, particularly its very disturbing measures to limit the work of the constitutional court—or the constitutional body—and some of the other questionable social measures it is taking, I think it is a kind of response to the dislocation that people are feeling.
That gets me back to the broader global context, the fact that people in all countries are, to some degree or other in the 21st century, in an era of low growth and vast technological change, and are looking for things to hang onto. In Poland, the current government is trying—and, ironically, not without some success—to tap into a certain degree of nostalgia for the Poland of work, for the importance of rural Poland, for the peaceful life on the farm. As a result, it is sort of standing against the directives of so-called Eurocrats in Brussels. In other words, it is the assertion that Poland is Poland and that Poland has its own way. It translates into a situation where there are some untoward currents in Poland, but I think Hungary is the country for which we have most cause for concern these days. However, we still have a situation where, in theory, every EU member should be committed to the same degree to democracy, pluralism, etc. Nevertheless, because of the specific ways the current regime in Poland is responding to some of these global challenges, the commitment to these—to what should be unimpeachable pan-European and global values—is not as strong as we would like it to be, and that is indeed cause for concern.