I don’t see this as problematic because, at least for Eastern European countries, the west absorbed some of their unemployment, while they were catching up, pot

I don’t see this as problematic because, at least for Eastern European countries, the west absorbed some of their unemployment, while they were catching up, potentially reducing internal tensions and smoothing the transition to a modern high value-added economy. Access to the European market allowed them to become part of the German value-chain, which produced wealth and exported technology and know-how. All this while receiving transfers from the West to build infrastructure. I’m not sure what alternative scenario we could have had. I think that Poland outside the EU would have ended up closer to Ukraine than to where it is now (Poland GDP per capita PPP is 3x the Ukrainian).