It is increasingly evident that in the foreseeable future, the EU is not willing to provide its candidate countries the same economic and social rights, which the current members enjoy. Assessing this and drawing the conclusions is the starting point for a more realistic picture of Europe.

According to this critical analysis, the EU has reached a point with its compromises and its pressure on the candidate countries, where the unchanged continuation of the present policies would endanger the results of the ongoing integration and push the process into a deadlock. Hungarian economic policy also cannot be shaped without taking this fact into consideration.

In Hungary, a selective educational system has evolved and seems to have stabilized, which is incapable of providing social equality even on the lowest level. The factors, which have pushed the quality of mass education "upwards", such as technology constraint, raison d'état, and labour movement, have disappeared. If it represents the fundamental values of public education (liberty, democracy and solidarity), is there a chance for progressive pedagogy to meet the political left again?

István Mészáros: Socialism Or Barbarism: From The "American Century" To The Crossroads. New York, Monthly Review Press, 2001.