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| Enlarging the European Union may be tough, but it should still be the Union’s top priority |
The European Union heads east
There is little doubt which enlargement matters more in Central and Eastern Europe. Although the attraction of NATO’s defence guarantee is obvious, after decades of communist misrule what embattled citizens want most of all is economic security. For that they will look to the EU. Not only can it offer newcomers the benefits of a large single market and generous regional subsidies. By entrenching the habits of democracy and the rules of free-marketry, even the eventual prospect of EU membership can help secure much-needed economic reforms that will bring economic growth.
Joining the EU means not only passing the political tests of democracy and respect for human rights and minorities. Joiners are expected to adopt the ever-increasing mass of European competition rules and market regulations. Negotiating which of these rules will start applying and when will be time-consuming; it took nine years of hard bargaining to admit Spain and Portugal. What is more, the relative poverty of the Central and Eastern Europeans will impose unpopular extra demands on EU farm spending and the budget for regional aid. And, as the commission pointed out this week, the new applicants themselves still have a lot to do to prepare themselves and their companies for the full blast of Europe-wide competition.
Hence the need to take EU enlargement in stages. It makes sense, as the commission suggests, to start with a group no bigger than five or six (Cyprus got the go-ahead earlier), and to press ahead with each on its own merits. Slowcoaches should not be allowed to hold back the nimbler-footed. As with NATO’s enlargement, this will involve invidious choices. EU governments have yet to endorse the commission’s list. Some will want to start with even fewer new entrants. Others will argue for more: if Estonia and Hungary, why not Latvia and Romania? Again as with NATO, countries that are most desperate for the boost of EU membership will often be those farthest behind in the race.
For that reason, finding ways to encourage the laggards is in some ways more urgent than cheering on the front-runners. Here NATO, with its “partnerships for peace” and its special charters and councils, has shown more imagination than has the European Union. One idea is to set up a standing conference to draw in all the EU hopefuls. The commission would also like to be more generous with aid. But perhaps the most important thing is to make this time’s also-rans feel wanted. The path to membership should be clearly marked, with regular reviews of progress and an indication of what more needs to be done before proper membership negotiations can begin.
This applies especially to Turkey (see article). True, many EU members are uncomfortable with the idea of bringing in Turkey. They point to its poor human rights record, to its size, even, sotto voce, to its “Turkishness”. Turkey still has much to do to qualify, yet it would be wrong to treat it differently from, say, Romania or Bulgaria. The EU is already a multicultural and multi-ethnic place, and so it should be; other European countries besides Turkey have Islamic traditions. For more than 30 years Turkey has been promised that if it manages to get through the same hoops and over the same hurdles that others do, it can join. As the EU enlarges, that promise should be repeated and new efforts made to help Turkey stay the course.
Reform begins at home
The biggest obstacles to EU enlargement, however, are the existing 15 members. Some are not at all keen. Others see economic and monetary union as the only EU project that matters. Their recent Amsterdam summit found them in crabby mood, unwilling to make the changes necessary to cope with a Union of 20 or 25 members. And in difficult economic times many will fiercely oppose both the cuts in farm prices and the redistribution of regional aid that the commission proposed this week as part of its enlargement plan. The big beneficiaries of the EU budget, such as Spain and Portugal, will doubtless defend their winnings fiercely.
The EU should be able to do better than this. The benefits from enlargement will be considerable, and not only in terms of stability on the EU’s eastern flank. Adding several faster-growing countries to the single market should pay economic dividends, while the costs in the early years can be contained by negotiating transition periods for the newcomers. Nor should widening the Union be seen as a barrier to deepening it, through economic and monetary union: Europe’s single currency will live or die on its own merits. As for agricultural reform and changes to regional subsidies, these are desperately needed whether or not the EU grows bigger.
Indeed, those unimpressed by this historical opportunity for Europe should think of the practical benefits. The new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe need to shake up and deregulate their economies in order to prosper in a tough, competitive world, whether they manage to join the EU or not. The EU’s existing members need to press on with reforms to their ways of working, their farm policy and their budget if Europe’s western half is to continue to prosper. Taking in new members from the east will help them find the courage to do so. It would be hard, the sceptics should note, to find a European project that arouses so many suspicions and yet produces such beneficial results.
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