As perplexing and enraging as it may seem to euro-sceptical British eyes, the European Union enlargement process continues. And that is because for those on the outside, the idea of “Europe” still holds great allure. “Europe for us continues to be the dream that may have evaporated for you,” Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, told a group of journalists visiting Tirana in May. We were on a quick reporting trip to Albania and Macedonia organised by the European Commission.
The EU continues the process of expansion not because its functionaries remain suffused with the idealism of Jean Monnet, but for pragmatic reasons. The carrot of membership is attached to a forbidding stick with which governments only recently acquainted with the rule of law can be threatened. The hope is that if potential members meet the various benchmarks the EU demands before accession, this will raise standards of transparency and governance. It would also prevent the western Balkans from becoming a blank spot on the map where national borders are permeable membranes easily penetrated by smugglers and traffickers of all kinds of contraband, as well as human beings.
But progress towards membership is assessed against more than border security—although that is what concerns most of us. Both Albania and Macedonia are making substantial progress in this area. The bureaucratic process also focuses on political criteria, including fair elections, a functioning justice system, human rights and press freedom, and economic criteria, as well—free markets and the free movement of labour. Then there is harmonisation with the acquis, the accumulated legislation, European court decisions and other legal acts that make up EU Law. These are divided into 35 areas to be assessed. (It really is bureaucrat heaven, the EU).
Since 2006, the whole process of EU enlargement has slowed down—partly due to fears that the criteria were being fudged to allow some former eastern bloc countries into the club before they were ready. Those fears are still present as the tabloid headlines about Britain being overrun by impoverished Romanian and Bulgarian hordes earlier this year demonstrated.
So the process continues, but at a snail’s pace. But there is a danger here. The would-be member states are not immune to political trends inside the EU. The elections to the European Parliament in May demonstrated that nationalist and authoritarian parties are doing well, and that the idea of “Europe” is not regarded as favourably as it once was. And the longer the accession process goes on the greater the likelihood is that voters in the Balkans will also go off “Europe” and take a populist turn instead.
This is particularly true in Macedonia. The country became a “candidate” for EU membership nearly nine years ago, but it is still some way from completing the accession process. Last April’s Parliamentary elections were won by a nationalist, right-wing grouping led by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski with 43 per cent of the vote. The result was challenged by the losing Socialist party which claimed there had been widespread fraud. OSCE monitors said the election was “efficiently administered,” but noted reports of widespread voter intimidation and media bias. That didn’t really come as a surprise. Macedonia had been slipping down the press freedom league table for a while, and is ranked 123rd out of 180 countries according to Reporters Without Borders. In 2009 it ranked 34th.
Besides inspections and assessments, the EU has money to herd its wannabe members along. Macedonia, though, isn’t very good at getting its share. Government administration is so poor by the end of 2013, just 37.3 per cent of the EU funding allocated to the country for the period 2007-2013 had been used.
Albania is just at the beginning of its process and pro-EU sentiment in government circles is very strong. Unlike their Macedonian neighbours, they have been very efficient when it comes to tapping the €100m, give or take, that the EU is providing for pre-accession assistance.
The enthusiasm is easy to understand. Since the fall of the Communist regime in 1990, Albania has had a rough ride. “This year is the first in our existence without conflict,” Edi Rama reminded us. “Peace is too big a burden for our shoulders.” It will be interesting to see what Albanians think if the process drags on for a decade as in Macedonia.
In the end, though, both countries, and others in the Balkans, will join the EU. It’s a matter of geography and history. Europe’s history for centuries has been driven by attempts to unite all its geographical territory under one banner. We’ve had the Wehrmacht and the Grande Armée. Now there is the EU. Those two days I spent in the Balkans dredged up a 20-year old memory. At the height of the Bosnian War, a group of London-based American correspondents were summoned to meet the then Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. We sat in the magnificent office overlooking St James’s Park and listened to him explain why containment rather than intervention was the government’s policy. We pressed him. With thousands dying and hundreds of thousands being displaced, containment was inhumane—hadn’t the time come for intervention?
Hurd reminded us of the many civil wars around the globe and asked, rhetorically, “Surely, you can’t expect us to intervene in all of them?” Overawed by the surroundings, as I was supposed to be, I did not say what I was thinking, “With great respect, Foreign Secretary, look at the map. This is the only war taking place in an area circumscribed by the boundaries of the EU and NATO.”
The cost to the EU—Britain included—for failing diplomatically to bring about an orderly dissolution of Yugoslavia is ongoing and has cost billions. Geography is inescapable and it makes Europeans of us all. “Europe,” meaning the European Union, is not the end of national identity, it is part of it.
