The European Union and Europe: Challenges for continent-wide integration

BY HELEN WALLACE

(Co-Director, Sussex European Institute and Director, ESRC One Europe? Programme)

One of the biggest challenges facing the European Union (EU) is how it comes to terms with Europe.^* It is not just a matter of whether, when, and how the EU enlarges eastwards and southwards, but also a question of whether or not the EU model of multilateral integration can set the parameters for cross-border co-operation and interdependence across the continent. The challenge is enormous and it provides one of the main themes of the ESRC Research Programme One Europe or Several? The dynamics of Change across Europe (details on the web at http://www.one-europe.ac.uk). This article summarises some of the factors that surround the question.

The Inheritance

• — A paradox: the EU lies at the heart of European integration, yet still lacks a European policy.
• — The template for integration: this is defined as west European and by west European experience; and is expressed through the acquis communautaire, which, though apparently technical, is actually normative.
• — A bounded process: with Western Europe cut off by a closed eastern border during the cold war, and ignorant about the lands to the east.
• — A discourse of integration: this is predicated on a tension between deepening and widening, and marked by fears of relapse into shallow integration in the west.
• — The EU as a 'club': with discrimination in favour of members and against non-members, and the rules and costs of entry defined by the incumbents.

EU policy towards Eastern Europe

• — A hierarchy of relationships: from trade and co-operation via association to perhaps accession, the stages defined by EU judgements about the extent of convergence by Central and East Europeans.
• — The conventions of enlargement: as an incremental and path-dependent process, with the articulation of the acquis and of timetables to guide the candidates, now reinforced by an emphasis on 'pre-accession' adjustments.
• — A hub-and-spoke character: based on the EU's relationships with individual candidates, and discriminating between different candidates.
• — Disjunction between the EU and the Nato enlargement processes.
• — Border management: as an increasing focus for the EU and articulated through inter alia the Schengen Agreements, which resurrect the boundary between insiders and outsiders.

Differentiated developments in Central and Eastern Europe

• — Variations in reform trajectories: not necessarily neatly in line with the EU's preferred markers of convergence, and not necessarily moving evenly towards a single transformation model.
• — Some regional regimes: the Central European Free Trade Area, the Baltic Free Trade Area, Black Sea co-operation and so on as examples of multilateralism, but vulnerable to interruption, as the EU chooses between candidates.
• — Very few 'pan-European' organisations: though both the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Council of Europe provide weak forms of multilateralism on a continental scale.
• — Internationalisation as well as Europeanisation: as related, but sometimes contradictory, processes.

The EU's other preoccupations

• — Economic and monetary union: as an overwhelming priority, now flanked by concerns about employment and growth.
• — Incorporating Schengen within the EU: and thus operating to consolidate the eastern border.
• — Adjusting to a different Germany: as a challenge for both Germany and its neighbours.
• — Agenda 2000: as a package of difficult intra-EU reforms and adjustments.
• — Institutional issues still to resolve: in spite of recent intergovernmental conferences.
• — Ambivalence about enlargement: as a recurrent feature of this and all previous rounds of expansion.
• — Emerging arena of European defence and security co-operation: which may not fit easily with eastern enlargement.
• — A new transatlantic bargain: perhaps to be established.

Different pictures of Europe

• — Europe looks and feels very different as an entity depending on the point from which it is viewed: hence, it is not clear that a single shared image of Europe can be viewed from Germany, Finland, Spain, Ukraine and so on.
• — Particular muddles about the eastern and south-eastern rims of Europe, with arguments about the role of Turkey a persistent evidence of the confusion in the EU.
• — South-eastern Europe: as a region that has generated the most confusion, both within the region and for West Europeans, and containing by a margin the poorest and most 'backward' countries in Europe.
• — War in Europe: and especially in 'Yugoslavia', first involving the region itself, and then gradually sucking in the west Europeans, but leaving unresolved the question of how European the region is, if values as well as geography are part of the definition.

Some scenarios

Incrementalism

EU policy of the past decade has been based on incrementalism and graduated enlargement, assuming that the EU has control of the process, and path-dependency determining the outcomes. But incrementalism is challenged by some EU developments, since EMU is a step-change, Schengen changes some of the parameters, the new European defence identity alters the focus, the candidates have more time to develop individual political personalities, and war in the south east alters some of the equations. And incrementalism would be a long-drawn-out process, that could delay and stagger enlargement over a long period.

Fragmentation

Various kinds of fragmentation can be envisaged, either with degrees of integration, some deeper, some shallower, engaging different groups of countries, or with a more general dilution of the integration process. Some would argue that countries may become more fragmented, as regionalisation gathers pace within individual countries. The participants in EMU are sometimes seen as the hard core of deep integrationists, although it is a much larger hard core at a membership of eleven countries than at one stage seemed probable. Some of the regional regimes elsewhere might take on a dynamic of their own, for example in the Baltic region, providing an alternative model of variegated integration. One question that would then follow would be whether and how these different groupings were connected to, or in competition with, each other. Some central and east European countries might be drawn much more quickly than others into the EU-defined circle of integration. There are obvious possibilities of some countries, and some clusters of countries, remaining distanced from integration and multilateral formations. These possibilities look most plausible in south-eastern Europe, and generally around the eastern rim of Europe. Big questions thus remain about how countries such as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova are connected into the European system. Some different versions of the question pertain to the degree of connectedness of Turkey. And in spite of new EU plans for a stability pact for south-eastern Europe, the contours of what is viable as a form of multilateralism here remain indistinct. Divisions between the more and the less connected are prompted by a mix of economic, social, cultural, political, and security factors. Fragmentation could breed competitive forms of divergence of a persistent kind. It is not a comfortable scenario.

Pan-European Inclusion

An idealist scenario for some would be the recasting of integration, or forms of integration, on a continent-wide basis. Few of the building blocks are in place for this, and it might well require rather active political engineering. Some argue that NATO's Partnership for Peace, combined with a revived OSCE, might provide some elements for a pan-European security regime. On the economic front there is now some discussion of ways of developing a pan-European free trade area - a PEFTA - although it would be difficult to achieve in practice as a vehicle for really liberalised trade. On the political front, the European Conference, sketched by the EU as an inclusive framework, might provide a starting point, although as yet it is a rather empty shell. Moreover, a vigorous pan-European framework would require activist policies from central and east European countries, and not only a more strategic approach from the EU.

A challenging research agenda

The future shape of Europe is obviously a testing question for practitioners. It is testing for academic researchers as well. Some dimensions of the question are being investigated in the ESRC One Europe? Programme over the next three and a half years, helped by two factors: first, the programme is bringing together expertise on different parts of the continent within a single academic endeavour; and, second, it draws in expertise on the political economy, the societal and the security issues. The underlying presumption is that European integration has to be construed as a multidimensional process.

One Europe or several? The dynamics of change across Europe. A new ESRC Research Programme.

Over the past decade the European continent has experienced a ferment of change. Ten years ago Europe's east-west division was still in place, and the European Union was still groping towards the fulfilment of the single market. Now NATO includes Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic; negotiations have opened to enlarge the European Union eastwards; and the euro is adopted as a single currency by eleven EU members. But the ultimate shape of all these changes remains unclear and contested; pressures for closer integration jostle with forces of disintegration, whether the tragic wars in the former Yugoslavia or the signs of resistance to distant and unaccountable institutions in Brussels. For both practitioners and academics the contours of this new Europe are puzzling and contradictory.

The One Europe? Programme examines contemporary processes of political, security, economic, social and cultural change across the European continent, as well as issues of convergence and divergence and prospects for integration and fragmentation. The Programme has both east-west and north-south dimensions. Many projects are cross-country comparisons. Others evaluate the European institutions, in particular the European Union and NATO, in the context of eastern enlargement. Programme themes include:

• — boundaries, affiliation and identities
• — social adjustment, wealth creation and distribution
• — institutions, citizenship and governance.

The country coverage is broad, and the range of topics is wide. The Programme will strengthen links with the research and practitioner communities in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

The (UK) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has allocated £4 million to this endeavour, a large investment for a programme that lasts until December 2002. The call for proposals, issued in December 1997, yielded 242 bids, shortlisted to 44, and then in September 1998, the Commissioning Panel recommended 24 projects for funding. Negotiations are being completed on contracts for these projects and applications for Programme Fellowships are being assessed. The projects will produce their results over the next three years or so. The Programme draws on the project teams to develop debate on the broad issues of the dynamics of change in Europe. In particular, the Programme aims to stimulate a closer dialogue with the practitioner community, through workshops, papers on issues of current policy and a database of expertise on countries and policy developments in contemporary Europe.

Further information

ESRC
One Europe or Several? Programme
Sussex European Institute
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton
BN1 9SH
United Kingdom

Tel: +44-(0)1273-678560
Fax: +44-(0)1273-678571
E-mail: h.wallace@sussex.ac.uk

^*This article is based on a contribution to a seminar at the University of North London on 14 May 1999 and information contained in the first issue of the newsletter associated with the Programme.