Shopping Experience in Central and Eastern Europe: Second - class Europeans in a Union of Equals?

Abstract: Over the past few years the EU has seen a surge in reports showing that analogical products of dual quality are being sold in different parts of the Union. An East – West divide has been noticed in the way that products of identical branding and packaging are of poorer quality in the Central and Eastern European shops, but not in the Western ones. The aim of the research is to investigate if the lack of EU’s action in proposing legislation to cope with such division affects the sense of Europeanness of the Central and Eastern European citizens who may feel second-class when exposed to inferior goods. I aim to do that by checking whether such shopping experience in Lithuania indeed shapes a sense of Europeanness by triggering the memory of the shortage and the poor quality of goods that were available under communist regime. Discourse analysis is carried out of the way the dual quality of goods in the EU is discussed in the media and conclusions are drawn. It is found out that shopping experience of the dual quality goods in the Central and Eastern Europe indeed re-establishes a traumatic memory of communism in turn inflicting a sense of disappointment with the present, a feeling of inferiority in Europe and obstructing a genuine feeling of equality and belonging to the Union.