EU Insider: Enlargement Hurdles

EU Insider: Enlargement Hurdles

Many stumbling blocks remain as the EU enters
the final stage of membership talks with the candidate
countries.

The European Union has made an unequivocal
decision to finish its current membership negotiations with up to
10 candidate countries by the end of this year, or with as many of
them as will be ready to wrap up the talks at the end of 2002. The
accession treaties with each of the candidate countries that finish
the talks are slated to be signed next spring. The overall aim is
to have those countries join the ranks of the EU member states
before June 2004.

There’s nothing new about this scenario. It was
confirmed last year at the EU summit in Laeken, Belgium. But the
language that the EU used at its most recent summit in Seville not
only confirmed the scenario; it also added some sharp formulations.
The EU leaders seem confident that there is enough political will
among the 15 member states to bring the enlargement process to a
successful conclusion. While some try to put an upbeat spin on the
issue, an increasing number of EU officials are starting to view it
as some sort of grim duty. There is a growing feeling of necessity,
if not fatalism, as far as enlargement is concerned. “It must be
done. There is no way back, even if I would wish there was,” one of
the Seville summiteers told me off the record.

The current Danish presidency of the EU, which
runs from July to December this year, will do its utmost to keep
the fire alive. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been
driving the message home for several days: “Even a small slippage
can create a huge delay. The window of opportunity will not stay
open for much more time after December.”

Naturally, the Danes would love to close their
glorious “Copenhagen to Copenhagen” circle. Nine years ago, the
1993 EU summit in Copenhagen set the criteria that candidate
countries had to meet to become members of the EU. This December,
the EU summit in Copenhagen is slated to wrap up the enlargement
negotiations.

But Danish vanity is not the only factor
involved. Rasmussen has a point. One cannot boil the exercise down
to a collection of objective criteria and timetables; it’s also
about morality and psychology. The momentum that is still guiding
the enlargement process could easily evaporate if the parties
involved are not careful. There are several stumbling blocks left
to overcome as the enlargement process enters the homestretch.

First among them is the second Irish referendum
on the Nice Treaty, which is considered to be one of the key
preconditions for enlargement. In 2001, the Irish voted to reject
the treaty in their first referendum on the issue. With the second
one rapidly approaching, the polls continue to show that most
respondents would vote against the treaty a second time. Granted,
the government in Dublin has yet to launch its “yes” campaign, but
the prospects do not look good at the moment. Moreover, the leaders
of other EU countries are already insisting that responsibility for
the “historic” eastward enlargement of the EU is now in the hands
of the Irish. If they vote “yes,” it can go ahead; if they vote
“no,” all bets are off.

A few brave souls, including outgoing Czech
Foreign Minister Jan Kavan, have proposed alternative plans–just
in case the Irish do actually vote “no.” One of them would be to
include the enlargement-related sections of the Nice Treaty into
the accession treaties that will be signed with the candidate
countries. But some EU member states might be hesitant to support
such a move, and the enlargement schedule would have to be delayed.
Moreover, the opponents of a swift enlargement–who have grown more
and more outspoken since the spring–might use this opportunity to
delay the process.

The second big hurdle for enlargement will be
Germany’s parliamentary elections in Sept ember. They are the
fundamental reason for the delay in achieving a common EU position
on direct subsidies for farmers in the future member states.
Germany is the most powerful–and most stubborn–member of the
group of four EU member states (along with the Netherlands,
Britain, and Sweden) that are opposed to the European Commission’s
proposal to let the newcomers benefit from a slice of this
agricultural aid money. It is widely believed that only a new
German government can make the final decision to let the new
members get some of the money. But the new German government won’t
be fully functional until late October, which effectively squeezes
the final “money” negotiations into the last few weeks of the year
and creates another potential argument for delaying the whole
process.

Another agriculture-related hurdle to
enlargement involves efforts to reform the EU’s Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP). European Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler,
along with various EU member states, is pushing for the CAP to be
reformed. In this context, the four countries that are opposed to
the EC’s scheme argue that if the new members start receiving
direct farming subsidies as soon as they join, the future of the
CAP reforms will be set in advance. On the other side, France and
Spain want the newcomers to get as much as they want.

So the enlargement process could easily become a
hostage to the debate about the future of the CAP, which isn’t
really scheduled to begin until 2005. Much depends on the EC
proposal for a “midterm review” of the CAP and, even more, on the
compromise that could be thrashed out on this issue at the
Copenhagen summit in December. Nevertheless, there is one
reassuring note to this debate: the four countries that are
blocking an agreement on the agricultural subsidies have
traditionally been supporters of enlargement.

Another stumbling block involves Cyprus, one of
the candidate countries. At the 1999 summit in Helsinki, the EU
decided that it would not grant membership to Cyprus until a
solution has been found to the division of the island between Greek
and Turkish zones. The EU is likely to push desperately for a
reconciliation in Cyprus, but no progress has been registered on
this issue so far. There are many ways this issue could affect
enlargement. For one, the other candidate countries could be harmed
if Rauf Denktas, who is the leader of the Turkish segment of
Cyprus, announces in December that he is in principle ready for
reunification but needs a few more months to prepare for it.
Everybody might then have to wait for Cyprus, because Greece would
simply not let the process move forward until Cyprus is ready.

Finally, a pall might be cast over the process
of enlargement if a political upheaval or U-turn takes place in one
or more of the candidate countries. The EU is not likely to accept
Slovakia, for instance, if former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar
returns to power after the September elections in that country.
This would not stop the EU from accepting the other candidate
countries, but it would have a traumatizing effect on
everybody.

One can imagine other problems along the way,
such as a difficult round of negotiations with Russia over the
Kaliningrad region. But that would not have as strong an impact as
the aforementioned hurdles. In the end, if the Irish give a nod to
the process and if the current member states decide that the
“historic task” of “reconciliation on the Continent” is worth a few
extra euros, the enlargement will happen.

After that they’ll have to tackle the even more
difficult task of figuring out how to manage a union with 25
members. But that’s another story altogether.

Karel Bartak is a regular TOL columnist. He is
based in Brussels.

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