Enlargement fatigue
Jose Ignacio Torreblanca
June 15, 2006
EU leaders meet today and tomorrow in what will be surely remembered as one of the emptiest European Council meetings in years. But emptiness is seldom innocuous: the great nothingness in which Europe has developed since the failed referendum in France last year is slowly but relentlessly swallowing entire bits of EU’s future. Many argue that the Constitution should be buried in order to spare much-needed political energies for practical policies. But EU leaders will tomorrow refuse to move justice and police matters to qualified-majority voting- a measure which would enhance national governments’ capacity to fight illegal immigration and transnational organized crime -. Then, while they sleep on the Constitutional project – containing rules which are essential for the EU to be able to effectively function at 27 members – they plan to spend considerable time and energy discussing whether the Union should enlarge further or not.
But this is the tail-that-wags-the dog approach. Romania and Bulgaria are already scheduled to join in January next year and Croatia and Turkey’s accession are not imminent. Besides, the European Parliament has already approved a resolution stating that there won´t be any new accession within the Nice Treaty current legal framework. This makes sense because the institutions of the Nice Treaty cannot take the EU beyond 27 members. Still, the Union’s current problems will not be solved by saying “No” to Macedonia, Montenegro or Turkey: they will be solved if and when the Constitution (or something resembling it) enters into force. EU leaders may then spend the weekend discussing about “absorption criteria”, but they won´t be able to hide that the overall discussion is about “enlargement fatigue”. Meeting the challenges of the 2004 enlargement is energy-demanding, but leaders and tired and would rather not adapt to changes. The Union has already developed sound political, economic and administrative membership criteria referring to democracy, market economy, the rule of law (see the EU Treaty’s article 49). The “absorption capacity” is thus on the table already since 1993, when the Copenhagen European Council stated that the Union may welcome new members “while maintaining the momentum of European integration”. But what some EU leaders want to discuss tomorrow is a different thing: many would want to definitively close the Union to new members as a precondition for further integration, which is a complete different thing.
Those who want definitive borders should be honest about it and promote an open discussion. It will do good to the EU to discuss these things. For a change, that would replace policy-making by subterfuges, which is today’s dominant policy mode. What does not make sense is to ask candidate countries to meet the accession criteria for opening the negotiations, then force them to go through lengthy negotiations over 35 chapters and then, when negotiations are finalized, tell them that despite meeting all the criteria, the EU cannot take them in because its absorption capacity is exhausted. But common sense is a scarce commodity these days.
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A more honest debate on enlargement would be a very welcome development – but one we are not too likely to see. Those who oppose enlargement often do so without admitting it and for reasons that they don’t want to acknowledge either. So for example, there is a lot of xenophobia and Islamophobia in the opposition to Turkey’s membership. For a country like France, many who care about France’s political leadership in Europe feel France lost a lot of political power in the EU after German reunification and again with enlargement to 25 countries in 2004, so they certainly don’t want a country larger than them like Turkey coming in. But again these arguments are often not admitted openly and hide behind ‘absoprtion’ arguments. In the case of Turkey, admitting one country of 70 million people will be a lot easier in many ways than the 2004 enlargment which added about 75 million people but 10 countries and so 10 new ministers round the table making debate much more difficult.
A more honest debate on the constitution and democracy would be good too but perhaps unlikely as well – the constitution was meant to improve EU democracy but now France and the Netherlands democratically said no, the real focus of debate is how to amend the constitution in such a way that countries can ratify it without referenda. So what we see whether on democracy or enlargement is an EU on the defensive, not delivering to its own publics let alone facing up to its role in the wider world.
Comment by Kirsty Hughes — June 15, 2006 @ 1:13 pm
There are two tempting but equally unwise approaches to the Constitutional question. One is to say “the Constitution and nothing but” – which ignores two “nos”. The other is to say “the Constitution is dead” – which ignores 15 “yeses”.
These apparent certainties are dead ends. The way to get on the offensive is to address the issues on which citizens say they want “more Europe” eg on terrorism, on promoting European values in the world, on energy; and at the same time return to the reality that an enlarging Europe needs reforms to its rules to improve its accountability, efficiency and coherence.
The risk is that the cries of crisis and despair will become self-fulfilling, by (unwittingly) strengthening those who do not want an effective and open Europe; or indeed an enlarging Europe. We don’t have that luxury; the world, which is changing very fast, won’t wait for the EU.
Comment by Alex Ellis — June 30, 2006 @ 5:26 pm