Vade Mecum for the Next Enlargements of the European Union

In this new CEPS Policy Brief, CEPS Senior
Fellow Michael Emerson explores the new
language and concepts introduced into the discussion at the
European Council meeting on 16-17 December 2004 and their
implications for the European Neighbourhood Policy.

The European Council meeting on 16-17 December took many
decisions that will set the course for the European Union’s
continuing enlargement process. These decisions concern in the
first place Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Turkey, but they also
contain some pointers for the nature of the process ahead that will
concern other possible candidates, from the Balkans to Ukraine. New
language and concepts have been introduced. 

Bulgaria and Romania received almost identical
treatment. For both it was acknowledged that the formal
negotiations had been completed on 14 December 2004, that the
Treaties of Accession should be signed in April 2005, and that full
accession would take place in January 2007. 

However, there are still some ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. The decisions
assume explicitly that reform efforts will be continued, especially
in the area of justice and home affairs for both candidates, and
also in the areas of competition and environment policies for
Romania. 

More generally, for both Bulgaria and
Romania “safeguard clauses will provide for measures to
address serious problems that may arise before accession or in the
three years after accession.” 

In practice this means that for domains such as the internal
market and justice and home affairs the EU would be able to take
protective measures if the acceding state does not fully implement
its obligations. This does not amount to very much. 

More importantly, it is widely considered that Romania has been
treated leniently with regard to the political Copenhagen criteria,
and that serious weaknesses in the quality of public governance,
which gave rise to critical reports from the European Parliament
over the last year, have hardly been made good in a matter of
months. The Romanian case will no doubt be cited in future by other
candidate states with relatively weak standards of public
governance, for example from the Balkans, with the argument “we are
up to Romanian standards, are we not?”. Others may say that the bar
has been lowered. Nonetheless the very recent presidential election
can be considered to be to Romania’s credit. Although criticisms of
electoral fraud in the first round were quite serious, in the
second round on 12 December the opposition candidate – Traian
Basescu, the mayor of Bucharest – achieved a surprising victory,
which was immediately and elegantly recognized by the outgoing
President Ion Iliescu. A smooth and democratic transfer of power to
the opposition, an acid test for new democracies, has been fairly
accomplished. 

Croatia got the date of 17 March 2005 for the
opening of negotiations, but on the very explicit condition that it
will “take the necessary steps for full cooperation with the
ICTY and […] that the remaining indictee must be located and
transferred to the Hague as soon as possible.” 

The remaining indictee is General Gotovina, wanted for war
crimes. He is surely the most wanted man in Croatia and also one of
its best-known faces. But is he actually in Croatia, within the
jurisdiction of the Croatian government? There are rumours that he
is in France, where his residence may be facilitated by the report
I have heard from unofficial Croatian journalistic sources that he
also has a French passport and citizenship, due to his service in
earlier years in the French Foreign Legion. If this is the case,
perhaps France could take over the dossier. 

Turkey was the major agenda item. The session
turned out to be one of the European Council’s classic
cliff-hangers. At the outset of the meeting the preferred positions
still diverged considerably among the member states and between the
EU and Turkey. Continuous negotiation had been going on for at
least a month beforehand, with drafts of the Presidency’s
conclusions being revised many times.

To read the article in full, visit the Centre for European Policy Studies website.