Why Does Success Still Mean (Moving) West?

Tainted by the legacy of the Iron Curtain, many people today still consider Europe a region of two halves- East and West. While regional development and targeted funding by the EU have sought to even the social and economic playing fields of Europe, an inequality persists. This article analyses why this movement is happening, and how it poses a threat to a common European identity.

A personal account

While the European Union has been busy discussing the “migrant crises”, there has been a silent movement happening within its own borders. We asked a 20 year old Slovak university student why she had decided to leave her country for seasonal employment.

“I have picked yellow bell peppers for three months in the Netherlands, working 10 hours a day, to cover my university tuition”

“Could you not find similar work in your home country?”

“Not anything that would pay as well,” she replied. “Working in a Dutch greenhouse for minimum wage pays almost three times better than an entry-level corporate job back home”

These are the words of Jasmína, moving westward. Her experience reflects the reality faced by many young, educated Europeans from Eastern EU countries. A common phenomenon that leaves many wondering: “Do I have to move west to make it?”

Internal borders of the EU - defining the regions

While higher wages may explain migration to wealthier regions, it isn’t enough to explain the undeniable historical and cultural motivations for the move from east to west in Europe, which is far more complex than migration based solely on economic factors. This is where we can look into historical dimensions to explain the clustering of poorer EU nations being located in the east of the union.

The economic disparity is deeply rooted in 20th century Soviet communism that delayed the eastern economies from opening up to world trade. While post WWII Western Europe underwent a process of economic integration with the help of financial inflows such as the Marshall Plan, establishing itself as the European core, the East was isolated behind the Iron Curtain as the periphery. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the one-by-one collapse of the communist states that followed it did not bring a smooth transition period either. In local Eastern European languages, many define the period as “the Wild 90s” due to the lack of social order and crime-ridden atmosphere, delaying the process of economic development even further.

The push and the pull

A generation later, the economic disparity is still felt, as young and highly educated workers depart in pursuit of greater professional mobility and material security elsewhere in the EU. Over time, a self-reinforcing dynamic emerges: regions lose precisely the cohort most capable of generating endogenous growth, institutional renewal, and economic diversification precisely, thus coming generations face similar problems and choose to leave as well.

Eastern Europe’s brain drain often hides in plain sight. Bulgaria’s hospitals look staffed, yet the façade rests on an ageing workforce: the country has the highest share of physicians aged 55+, an indicator that younger doctors are training at home and healing patients abroad. The same slow leak runs through the region’s tech pipeline. Senior AI engineers in Western and Northern Europe earn $90,000–$150,000, 50% more than those with the same qualifications in Southern and Eastern Europe. And while the cost of living may be generally more expensive in the West, those higher costs can also come with better-funded public services, infrastructure, and the support for growing industries like tech and AI, leading many to view it as a salary gap wide enough to turn graduation into departure.

Together, the vanishing young doctor and the migrating engineer produce an image of a region investing heavily in talent it never fully gets to keep. Considering these are examples of some of the highest paying careers in the region, the tempting reality of migration to Western Europe is likely much stronger for those in menial work.

Mobility, then, becomes not simply attractive but economically rational.

Over time, migration can transform from an economic decision into a cultural assumption. For many young people seeking upward mobility, professional recognition, and a higher standard of living, movement westward can become an anticipated stage of adulthood. This expectation cannot be explained by income alone. If the most ambitious and highly educated increasingly imagine their futures elsewhere, mobility risks becoming not merely possible but normative. Success is no longer envisioned as something cultivated domestically, but something accessed externally.

Implications to the union

For Central Eastern Europe (CEE), the consequences extend beyond labour shortages alone. Population contraction and an ageing population place mounting pressure on public finances, reducing the tax base while expanding demand for healthcare and welfare provision. At the same time, smaller domestic markets and tighter labour pools in these CEE countries may constrain investment and diminish the capacity to cultivate higher-value industries. These developments raise broader questions about the Union’s long-term competitiveness. Labour mobility remains a foundational principle of European integration and has delivered substantial gains for receiving economies; however, sustained asymmetries in the geography of skilled labour may risk deepening rather than narrowing regional divergence.

The implications are ultimately political as much as economic. If prosperity becomes synonymous with departure, regions risk losing not only human capital but also collective confidence in their own futures. In that sense, movement from east to west may represent not simply a redistribution of labour, but an eroded belief in domestic possibility and collective European identity.

In an era of political division, rising far-right populism, and encroaching hostility toward ’others,’ building a strong, collective European identity matters more than ever. Yet this identity will remain fractured so long as opportunity within the Union stays unevenly distributed. Eastern Europeans often identify as Eastern European, while those in the West tend simply to identify as European, making ’the West’ synonymous with Europe and its values, and casting the East as its perpetual ’other.’ This is not incidental. Identity flourishes with opportunity, with the chance to explore one’s voice, values, and aspirations, and so long as that opportunity remains concentrated in one half of the continent, a deficit of belonging will persist across the whole.

If Europe is serious about forging a shared identity, it cannot be built on an uneven foundation. Success, it seems, still means West, and until that changes, so too will the meaning of being European.

This article was written as part of the “Newsroom Europe” project. The project brings together young Europeans from Germany, Cyprus, and Ireland, who report in international editorial teams on European issues. Its aim is to strengthen journalistic skills and to foster European exchange. The project is organized by the European Academy Berlin. Treffpunkteuropa.de is the project’s media partner.