Decisions will be taken in the next few weeks on the countries-possibly as many as ten-to join the EU in a first round of enlargement in 2004. This expansion of the EU is a geopolitical move of the first importance.
At present there are 13 EU-applicant countries: ten countries of central and eastern Europe (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria), two Mediterranean islands (Malta and Cyprus) and Turkey. The EU is negotiating terms of membership with 12 of them-but not yet with Turkey, which does not fulfil the political conditions.
Extension to include them will transform the EU-15 into an EU-28. That will not be the end of the story. Other European countries aspire to membership, including five countries of the western Balkans-Croatia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia-and possibly three Efta countries-Iceland, Norway, Switzerland-which at present prefer to stay outside. This could lead to an EU-36; and then there are other aspirants further to the east, such as Ukraine or (one day?) Russia.
Why do they want to join?
For the central and east Europeans, the primary motive for joining the EU is political: as soon as they freed themselves from communism and the grip of Moscow, they turned to the EU, not only as a proof of rejoining the European family, but as a way to underpin their return to pluralist market democracy.
Linked to this is security. For "hard" security, all the central Europeans want to join Nato-and Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have done so. The EU offers another security dimension through economic integration, through the EU institutions in which ministers meet regularly, and through the EU's nascent foreign and security policy.
These are buttressed by a strong economic motive: the wish to join the EU's single market, and to benefit from its common budget.
Existing EU members should also benefit in three main ways. First, the addition of rapidly growing economies to the single market will boost growth and create jobs. Second, the adoption by future members of the EU's policies on internal security helps to combat transnational problems of crime, drugs and illegal immigration. Finally, enlargement will enhance Europe's weight in world affairs.
The initial response of the EU to enlargement in the early 1990s was hesitant. At the time, it was completing the single market and still enlarging from 12 to 15 members. Nevertheless, at Copenhagen in June 1993, a historic promise was made that "the countries in central and eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of the union, as soon as they are able to assume the obligations of membership by satisfying the economic and political conditions." For the first time the EU promised membership to countries even before they applied, and for the first time it spelled out its conditions for membership-the so-called "Copenhagen criteria" (see next page).
Were these conditions a way of delaying membership? Sometimes it has seemed so to the applicant countries, whose preparation has been long and hard. They have been frustrated by the delays, especially since Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac promised membership for 2000.
But the conditionality which the EU has exercised-the "leverage" of future membership-can also be seen as a remarkable success. Together with pressure from the IMF and World Bank, it has helped the countries of central Europe to make political, economic and administrative reforms that were essential for their transition and modernisation, independently of joining the EU. Their governments and peoples deserve the credit for these reforms but the process was sustained by leverage from Brussels, the market-opening "Europe agreements," and the EU's financial and technical assistance. In the countries of southeast Europe-which lag further behind, and where the risks of failure are greater-this leverage must again be used to full effect.
Why have the EU members been so demanding with their conditions? There are two kinds of reason: prudence and equity.
Prudence because there is a real risk that premature membership for countries whose systems cannot cope with the policies and rules of the EU could lead to shocks and disappointments, for themselves and for other members. The difficulties of the early years of Greek membership illustrate the risk.
Equity is about the balance of rights and obligations inherent in EU membership. The biggest prize which a country gains by joining is a full say in the running of the club-the right to votes and seats in the EU's decision-making bodies, on the same terms as other countries. For the new members to enjoy that right, the existing members require an acceptable degree of compliance with the obligations. This does not mean that acceding countries have to apply all the rules at once-delays of application and technical adjustments were a feature of previous enlargements, and have been accorded in this round. But, clearly, if a country got opt-outs from important parts of EU policy, its right to a full vote in those areas would be put in question.
For the countries of central and eastern Europe, the preparation for the EU has been accompanied by a huge social and economic transition, with costs as well as benefits for individuals and groups. It is not surprising that there are Eurosceptics who are ready to blame the problems of change in these countries on the EU, and to exploit concerns about loss of identity. Questions of sovereignty and national and cultural identity play a big role in countries such as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which for more than 40 years were part of the Soviet Union, and in Slovenia and Slovakia, which in 1,000 years of history never before had real autonomy. For small nations that have only recently regained freedom and self-determination, EU membership suggests a loss of sovereignty, although the experience of existing members (particularly small countries) shows that it augments their capacity to influence events and cope with globalisation.
Language is important for all of them as a symbol of national identity, which is why the EU will accept their national languages as "official" languages. There is no plan in Brussels to impose a single language although in practice English, as the preferred second tongue of most of the new countries, is more and more used in the EU institutions. In the EU-25 there will be another ten official languages, in addition to the existing 11, with the necessary costs of interpretation and translation. In a multicultural, multilingual organisation, how could it be otherwise? Elected members of the European Parliament must have the right to speak their own language.
Enlargement is also dredging up some noisy disputes from the past. For example, the dispute over the Czech Republic's Benes decrees-which led to the expulsion of 2.5m Germans from the Sudetenland after the war-or the Hungarian law on the status of Hungarian-speakers in surrounding countries. The resurgence of nationalism is a risk in these newly independent states, as in the west.
Nevertheless, they have succeeded in building and maintaining democratic institutions and practices during a period of rapid change. Governments have been formed and dismissed in a regular and orderly way: on the same day that France put Le Pen ahead of Jospin, Hungarians rejected extremist parties and voted in a socialist-led government, while in Bulgaria an ex-king has transformed himself by democratic process into a prime minister.
How soon can new members join the EU?
The aim is that they should join in time for the next elections for the European Parliament in June 2004. The membership negotiations, which began with six countries in 1998, and were extended to 12 in 2000, are moving into their final phase. According to the "road-map" devised by the European Commission, the EU has to finalise its positions on all remaining problems by mid-2002, so that a deal can be concluded by the end of the year with those countries that are judged to be ready.
At the Laeken summit in December 2001, it was forecast that up to ten countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus) could be ready, if they maintain progress in preparing for membership. Bulgaria and Romania are behind the others in terms of preparation, but hope to join by 2007.
The negotiations should be finished by the end of this year, so that the results, in the form of an accession treaty, can be ratified during 2003. Denmark, which has the EU Presidency in the second half of 2002, wants to achieve that: with the slogan "from Copenhagen to Copenhagen" they hope to conclude the process at their end-of-year summit.
Already the ten countries of the "Laeken" group have closed up to 28 of the 31 chapters of the negotiations. Still open are the three big chapters with financial impact-budget, agriculture, structural funds-where there are disagreements not only between the EU and the applicant countries, but between EU members themselves. On farm subsidies it has been proposed that applicant countries should begin in 2004 with only one quarter of the "direct payments" that EU farmers get, full payment being phased in over 10 years. This is opposed by some of the richer existing members, but denounced by the applicants as unfair.
Some argue that it would be better for the EU to reform the CAP now, before bringing in new members-who could even slow things down. But to make reform of farm policy a precondition for the next enlargement could delay it for a long time, especially given France's known opposition to reform. Better for the two to go ahead together. That, however, is easier said than done. One of the key features of the present negotiations is that they require decisions on the EU budget only up to 2006 This is a welcome simplification, leaving the difficult questions of the size and distribution of the post-2006 budget to be thrashed out later, after the new members have arrived. But the dispute over payments to farmers threatens to cross that divide and open up the longer-term debate.
Nevertheless, the second half of this year should see the end of the negotiations for EU membership. There will be a few sleepless nights for ministers, and the financial deal for 2004-2006 may be complicated, particularly with so many countries around the table. But the concluding stage should not be too difficult. First, the existing EU members have already agreed on the overall budget for those years, and the sums of money at issue are not large. Second, the new members expect to be net beneficiaries from the EU budget as soon as they join (or at least by the end of the first year) so they will not to want to delay membership by prolonging negotiations.
Will people vote for enlargement?
How firm is this timetable? What could make it slip? On the EU side, the main problem is ratification of the Nice Treaty. It remains to be seen whether the Irish will say "yes" in a second referendum on Nice this year. If they do not, the EU will face a crisis and not only for enlargement. For while Nice may not be a legal precondition for adding new countries, it is a political necessity. For the EU's future development, important changes accepted by a majority cannot be blocked by one member.
For the applicants, the final verdict on their readiness has not been given. They must still handle the final stages of the negotiations, in which it may be difficult to match the results with political and public expectations.
When a deal is done, and a treaty is ready for up to ten new members to join in 2004, it will need to be ratified in both current and future member states. In existing EU states ratification will be through parliaments, the applicant countries on the other hand will all be having referendums. What are the prospects for "yes" votes?
In recent elections in western Europe, many people have voted for parties which are hostile to the EU and demand better security and control of immigration. This trend could build resistance to enlargement-although, in reality, the extension should help to improve its internal and external security. The prospective members have done much already to comply with European standards in the fight against crime, drugs, trafficking of humans, and terrorism. Bringing them into the EU will encourage them to do more.
There are also fears in existing EU states of low-cost competition and of incoming workers from the new members. But these doubts are offset by the delay of up to seven years agreed for free movement of workers, and by the fact that new members have to respect EU rules on state aids and competition.
In fact, public opinion in general supports enlargement in existing EU states. The April 2002 Eurobarometer showed that 51 per cent of respondents in the EU-15 are in favour of it, while 30 per cent are against (see box).
It is interesting to note that support is higher in some of the newer, poorer, EU-members, such as Greece, Spain and Portugal, while it is lower in Germany, Austria, Britain and France. German and Austrian hesitation is understandable, since those countries are more "exposed" geographically to the new members; although they stand to benefit from economic integration with their neighbours (and have already profited), they also perceive more directly the increased competition. Low support in Britain is probably due to ignorance; the British proportion of "don't knows" for enlargement, as for other EU issues, is higher than elsewhere. The French case is more worrying, for opponents of enlargement outnumber supporters, and in some political circles enlargement, despite the public commitment, is seen as a potential threat to France's influence in EU decision-making.
In the applicant countries, where there will be referendums on membership, public opinion can be volatile (support for the EU in Estonia surged when it won the Eurovision song contest) but it remains generally favourable. The March 2002 Eurobarometer results showed that in the 13 applicant countries 65 per cent of voters would vote "yes" if there was a referendum (see box).
The high support in Bulgaria and Romania suggests that the EU looks better to those who are further from joining. In fact, it is not surprising that in countries which have made painful economic reforms on the road to membership, such as Poland, the EU is now perceived less euphorically. Nevertheless, overall support for membership is still strong. The country with the narrowest difference between "yes" and "no" is Malta where the opposition party is against EU membership. In the other countries, opposition parties mostly criticise governments for not joining the EU more rapidly. (In the Czech Republic, however, opposition leader Vaclav Klaus has developed his own brand of Euroscepticism which could be influential in a referendum.)
What difference will it make?
So, despite difficulties, there is a high probability of up to ten new members of the EU in 2004. What will that expansion mean? What effect will it have on the workings of the EU?
There has been a tendency to exaggerate the results of this expansion and to suppose that it will transform the EU out of recognition. A glance at the arithmetic dispels that idea: going from EU-15 to EU-25 means an increase in population of 20 per cent, and an increase in economic product of only 4 per cent. In relative terms, that will be less significant than the first enlargement from EU-6 to EU-9. Expansion will bring in many more small countries: Poland with its population of 39m (the same as Spain) is only in the middle range of size, while the other nine countries together amount to 36m.
But those two main indicators-demography (plus 20 per cent) and economy (plus 4 per cent) reveal one of the key features of the next expansion: the arrival of societies with GDP per head much lower than the present members, widening the social and economic gaps inside the EU. So, although the new members will not bring fundamentally new problems to the EU, they will cause it to rethink and re-shape its ideas in two areas. First, is solidarity and cohesion: the EU's policies to reduce gaps between poorer and richer regions. How to promote economic convergence-at a time when west European voters seem rather inward-looking-so that the new members can catch up with the old? Second is geopolitics: as the rolling process of enlargement extends the frontiers to east and south the EU will acquire new neighbours. What about future relations with Russia and Ukraine?
Simple arithmetic also shows that the field where enlargement poses the biggest institutional challenge is decision-making. Already with 15 countries, in a system designed originally for 6, it is difficult to get decisions in the EU; going from 15 actors to 25 or more will make it even more complicated.
Many more of the actors will be small or very small countries, and the EU will need to ensure that their views are taken into account, as well as those of the "big boys." At present the EU-15 has 4 countries with a population of more than 50m (Germany, Britain, France, Italy), plus middle-sized Spain (40m) and 10 others; EU-25 will have the same 4 big members, plus two middle-sized ones (Spain, Poland) and 19 others (including 11 with a population of 5m or less). This change will test the capacity of the EU's institutions to continue to reconcile the views of big and small, and avoid the emergence of a "hegemonic" system which could damage the EU's cohesion.
On the other hand, the arrival of more small countries could strengthen the commission's efforts to promote integration and shift the balance away from the "intergovernmental" direction of recent years. Although-in a further twist-many of the small countries will be closely guarding their newly acquired sovereignty, so are unlikely to support strongly federalist measures.
With more diversity, there must be more "subsidiarity": Brussels will have to concentrate on doing important things well, leaving other matters to nations or regions. The decision-making changes decided at Nice in 2000 are a minimum and more reforms will be needed to ensure that the EU can function better and respond to the needs of its citizens. As newcomers knock on the door, the EU is having to look again at some of the basic questions: what do we want to do together? How to do it? That is now the task of the Convention on the Future of Europe (due to report in 2004) in which the applicant countries are also making a vigorous contribution.
As Timothy Garton Ash has written: "Europe has had a name for 25 centuries, but it is still in the design stage. Now, for the first time ever in European history, most states on the European continent are freely committed to designing, by consent, a non-hegemonic order for most of Europe. The small remaining problem is: how?"
