Charlemagne: Wider still and wider

Date: 13/03/04

Where do the eventual boundaries of the European Union lie?

GROUCHO MARX famously remarked that he did not want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. The European Union faces the opposite problem. It is a club that does not appear to want anybody who applies for membership. One senior official comments that “the countries that are most attractive to us as future members are small, rich ones like Norway and Switzerland.” Unfortunately the Swiss and Norwegians show no signs of wanting to join. All the would-be new members are poor or big, or both.

On May 1st the EU will formally admit ten new countries. Most of them are from central Europe, and all are poorer than the EU average. Then, 2007 is the target date for the EU to let in two more relatively poor countries: Bulgaria and Romania. That would mean an EU of 27, which would become 28 if Croatia manages, as it hopes, to slip in at around the same time. By the end of this year, the EU is due to decide whether formally to open membership negotiations with Turkey - a country that is not only poor and big, but also Muslim. The betting in Brussels is that, unless the Cyprus re-unification talks go badly awry, Turkey will secure its invitation to start negotiations. And that means that eventual Turkish membership will become almost inevitable - perhaps by around 2015.

By then, the four remaining western Balkan countries - Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia - might also be joining the EU; Macedonia has already applied. And if Turkey gets in, is there any real argument for keeping out Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus or Georgia (whose new government has just announced that its long-term goal is to “join Europe”)? Some people have talked of Russia joining the EU one day; others have mentioned Israel, a putative Palestinian state or even Morocco.

All this enthusiasm for Europe should be intensely flattering to the bureaucrats of Brussels. After all, it is the mark of a good club that people clamour to become members. An ever-larger EU might also bring big benefits. It would create a political unit with a huge population, furthering the Union's ambitions to be a global power. The EU is also effective at moulding the behaviour of would-be members. The hope is that by exporting European laws and values, it can expand a zone committed to prosperous and peaceful co-existence and the rule of law.

Yet in reality many of today's members view the prospect of an ever-expanding Union with a mixture of fatalism and dread. There are several reasons for this. The first, inevitably, is money. The EU redistributes billions of euros from rich to poor members: more poor members means more claimants on the purse. A second is immigration. One of the Union's fundamental principles is that there should be freedom to move from one member country to another. But anti-immigration parties are gaining ground across western Europe; they could make huge political capital out of potential Turkish membership.

Then there is the feeling that a larger EU might simply be unable to function. If you add in all the Balkan countries, Turkey and a further scattering from the former Soviet Union, you soon arrive at a European Union of almost 40 members. In a book published this week, Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch European commissioner, argues that “the larger the group, the fewer decisions it can take.” To get any decisions in an EU as big as 40, remaining rights to national vetoes would surely have to go. On current population projections, moreover, Turkey could be the biggest member in 15-20 years' time. It would thus command the biggest block of votes, in a Union that is already responsible for as much as 50% of the new domestic law in its member countries.

Contra vox pop

Ordinary citizens in today's EU of 15 could come up with any number of plausible-sounding objections to Turkish or Ukrainian membership. They are not really European, they are too poor, they are too different. But all such objections have been defined away in Brussels. Turkey was accepted as at least a potential candidate as far back as the 1960s, on the basis that part of its land-mass is in Europe. As for Ukraine or even Russia, they surely fit the traditional geographic definition of a Europe that stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals.

Moreover, the European Union has consistently rejected the idea of insisting on a minimum level of income or wealth for EU members. Its only serious economic demand is that members should have a “functioning market economy”.

The question of European values may be the most sensitive of all. Some people in today's EU may believe that the borders of Europe are those of traditional Christendom, but this position has never been formally endorsed by EU leaders. They are understandably wary of ethnic- or religion-based definitions of Europe. After all, today's Union already has millions of Muslim and black citizens. Two possible future members, Albania and Bosnia, are mainly Muslim by heritage. Instead the EU defines itself as a “Union of values”. Any European country that embraces democracy and human rights is fit for membership.

Citing national interest or public opinion might seem a standard procedure in discussing a far-reaching foreign-policy decision in a nation-state. But it is regarded as barely respectable in the multinational European Union. The EU is comfortable talking about values, but uncomfortable talking about interests. And it has consistently been built over the heads of its citizens. Although all ten new members held referendums to approve their entry, voters in the 15 existing members were not consulted. Opinion polls in France show strong opposition to this enlargement. But when the French government tentatively floated the notion of holding a vote to approve it, this was swiftly denounced and quickly dropped. Whether such high-minded elitism will be enough to drive through the even more controversial enlargements to come must be open to question.

Commentary feature. Where do the eventual boundaries of the European Union lie?

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