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The Limits of Expansion

From the original six countries, to the 27 of today; since the European Union began, its expansion has proceeded in steps. But no expansion has pushed the Union so far to its limits as the eastward one.

In May 2004 ten countries joined the EU in one fell swoop. On January 1, 2007, Romania and Bulgaria joined the fold.

Additional candidates have been standing at the door for a long time: Turkey, Croatia and Macedonia are official candidates for entry. In addition, the western Balkan countries of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Albania are on the waiting list: they have been assigned "potential candidates for accession" status. Ukraine and Georgia also have expressed an interest in EU entry.

Since January 2007, the EU flag flies over 27 member states.
Photo: Photocase.com

Who can be part of Europe?

"No one has the right to tell the Ukrainians that they do not belong to Europe. The treaties say that every European country can request admission to the EU," admonished former Polish foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek in an interview with the Slovakian newspaper Pravda on April 20, 2006.

But critical voices are rising, particularly in the old EU countries; they say the Union is already unwieldy, that making compromises and and reaching agreements are all the more cumbersome. "To manage entry politically, it would have made sense to spread it out over a longer period," writes Jean Quatremer in Libération, further lamenting the EU's distance from the people. "In its hastiness to expand, the Union damaged the sensitive bond of trust that exists between itself and the people: The course of history does not only affect the east but also the west. The Commission and the governments have forgotten this."

At a meeting in Brussels in December 2006, the member states decided that from now on, the EU would administer new members more strictly, subjecting them to more rigorous conditions. Thus they temporarily halted the expansion process.

Expansion: An Economic Success Story

"From an economic standpoint, there is no doubt that the expansion policy should continue," German economist Katinka Barysch of the London Centre for European Reform told euro|topics. Her institute, a state-funded think-tank of economists and political scientists, regularly contributes to the European debate with economic and political analyses. "We see ourselves as pragmatic improvers," Barysch emphasizes, "but we are not federalists." Great Britain, she explains, is – together with the Scandinavian and Eastern European countries – one of the most outspoken proponents of expansion; she considers the opposition to be in France, Austria and Germany, while the other southern and western European countries pursue a more moderate-sceptical course.

The report of leading European economic institutes, released in December 2006, suggested that the expansion is at the very least an economic success. One of its conclusions is that the German economy has profited more than expected through the connection between trade, capital and job markets. The new member states profit primarily through direct investment, the old countries gain new markets, and both sides have gained new export potential.

Integration in Steps

But is expansion also a political success? "It is primarily due to the clear and unambiguous EU perspective that we have seen so much progress in such a surprisingly short time, in the eastern central European countries as well as in Bulgaria and Romania," writes Swiss journalist Cyrill Steiger in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

But Berlin-based political scientist Kai-Olaf Lang considers this argument one-sided. "We are not only exporting stability, but also instability. And this risk grows exponentially," he tells euro|topics. "It is not that new conflicts necessarily arise through expansion, but that existing ones are exacerbated." Lang believes that ethnic conflicts remain virulent in the Balkans, and he also worries about an increase in right-wing populism in eastern and central European countries. Lang belongs to the research group 'EU-Integration' of the state-funded Foundation for Research and Politics of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, which advises, among others, the German federal government.

"The passion with which the Union wanted to take all European countries under its wing after the end of the Cold War is a thing of the past," states Europe specialist Martin Winter of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and concludes: "Under these conditions, only a carefully developed concept of privileged partnerships can help." And political scientist Katrin Bastian, too, pleads for the concept of the "gradual membership," in an essay in Die Welt on November 23, 2006.

This is why Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker saw a "core Europe" looming on the horizon, in Die Welt of June 15, 2006.

The Need for Reform

While old Europe argues over expansion-exhaustion, EU bureaucracy and difficulties in reaching agreements, the enthusiasm among new members remains unbroken. Egidijus Vareikis of the Lithuanian newspaper Lietuvosa reytas suggests, "European integration is viewed with envy on other continents, because aside from Western Europe, no such experiment has succeeded anywhere else."

"The doors must remain open to others," says Hungarian economist András Inotai, who has led the Institute for Word Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 1991, and from 1996-98 prepared for Hungary's entry into the EU, in Brussels. "If there is expansion-exhaustion, it's because of the western European countries' lack of readiness for reform."

Inotai is not alluding to the European Constitution that France and the Netherlands rejected, nor is he talking about the pending institutional reforms that frequently bolster arguments against unlimited expansion. He sees the need for reform in the old member countries in terms of "further liberalization of the domestic market, restructuring of social and welfare states, addition of flexibility to the job market, dropping national and ex-colonial affectations."

Constitution

Czech journalist Jiri Sobota also sees a need for institutional reform in the EU – and agrees with his colleagues across the spectrum of the European press. As he writes on December 14, 2006 in the weekly paper Respekt: "The entry of new countries was always linked with a move toward closer cooperation – such as with the treaties of Maastricht or Schengen. After 2004 it didn't work any longer, because the European Constitution is on hold."

But at the Brussels EU summit meeting in December 2006, Luxembourg Prime Minister Juncker's recommendation that the Union undergo constitutional reform before expansion resumes, was rejected by the majority of the countries. "Everything is blocked for the time being," agrees Katinka Barysch. She considers the temporary hold on expansion to be "perhaps wrong, but realistic."

Sabine Seifert

Sabine Seifert was an editor for euro|topics. She studied German studies and History before going on to work as a cultural editor at the tageszeitung ...
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