Charlemagne: A case of enlargement fatigue

Hostility to expansion of the European Union reflects displaced fears of globalisation

EUROPEANS are in a funk about enlargement. National politicians fret about the European Union's "absorption capacity". They hold grand conferences on "the limits of Europe". The EU has just suspended the first stage of accession talks with Serbia. Next week, the European Commission is likely to postpone judgment on whether the next two candidates--Bulgaria and Romania--should join in 2007 or be delayed until 2008.

Partly, these decisions are efforts to get the candidates to speed up reforms (and, in Serbia's case, to hand Ratko Mladic, a war-crimes suspect, over to The Hague tribunal). But they also reflect a widespread view, in Brussels and even more in national capitals, that expansion must be slowed down to respond to "enlargement fatigue".

Many politicians have decided that public opinion is irrevocably opposed to enlargement. They think that opposition is understandable, if not justified, because of the impact of enlargement on jobs; that enlargement has gone too fast; and that another round may overwhelm the EU's institutions, making them unable to function. They conclude that it would be best for all concerned (including future members) to pause while everything settles down. Indeed, this is the emerging conventional wisdom. Yet it is wrong in almost every particular.

Europeans are not opposed to enlargement in general (though they may be to the specific case of Turkey). A slim majority is in favour. A new poll by the European Commission's public-opinion arm has more people saying that enlargement is a good thing for the EU (55%) than that the EU is a good thing for their own countries (49%). If national politicians were serious about reflecting public opinion, they should be calling for a pause in all activities of Brussels, rather than in further expansion of the club. It is not clear that enlargement fatigue is really about public opinion at all.

What is clear, in contrast, is that the 2004 enlargement to the east has produced net benefits for Europe, increasing trade, investment and income. In principle, there could still be winners and losers. Opposition to enlargement might be concentrated among the losers, just as support is strongest in the three member states--Britain, Ireland and Sweden--that have opened up their labour markets to new members. But in fact enlargement's impact on jobs in countries most vehemently opposed to expansion (eg, France) has been minimal, partly because the French have insulated themselves from it and partly because French unemployment is a self-inflicted wound, not the result of competition from central Europe. In short, although some people blame Polish plumbers for taking their jobs, there is no evidence that this is actually happening.

Has enlargement gone too fast? It took 15 years from the fall of the Berlin Wall for the first ex-communist countries to join the EU--three years more than the time between Franco's death and Spain's accession. Has it made the EU's institutions unworkable? So far, the EU has functioned broadly as well--and as badly--with 25 members as it did with 15. Nor is all the EU's money being gobbled by regional aid for new members: in 2007-13, the share of the budget going on regional support falls, while the share going to farming rises. The big internal divisions in the EU remain what they have always been--ie, between old member states (most often Britain and France). The only time a new member has set itself against the rest of the EU was when Poland held up a decision on VAT rates, which is hardly evidence of widespread institutional dysfunction. In general, predictions that enlargement would do all manner of harm have not materialised.

Perhaps most important, the EU is not about to be overwhelmed by a second wave of expansion that might explain some of today's fears. The admission of Bulgaria and Romania is a coda to the enlargement of 2004, not a prelude to something new. No country seeking to join will be ready to do so in the next year or two (Croatia might be ready by about 2010, Turkey not until long after that).

The conclusion is that the public reaction against enlargement does not reflect fears about what any prospective expansion might actually do. It reflects, rather, doubts about what previous rounds have done. It is backward- not forward-looking. And those doubts are irrational, because the charges levelled against enlargement are mostly untrue or exaggerated.

Globalisation blues

This suggests that enlargement fatigue really reflects something more deep-seated than the issue of expanding per se. And that something seems to be a fear of the change that is associated with globalisation.

That same recent EU poll found a striking correlation between countries that say globalisation is a threat and those that blame enlargement for threatening their jobs. In France, 72% of respondents were fearful on both counts. Austria, Germany and Belgium came near the top of both lists. But the old member states most relaxed about enlargement also tend to see globalisation as an opportunity, not a threat. Enlargement fatigue seems to be one of globalisation's discontents.

That does not make it easier to deal with. But it suggests that slowing the process down may not do much to ease enlargement fatigue. And it would certainly damage the EU's interests among applicant countries, in the Balkans and beyond, where opponents of "Europeanisation" are quite happy about talk of enlargement going too far. Moreover, it cannot alter enlargement's fundamental logic--that it benefits existing and new members alike, and that failure to enlarge can carry big costs of its own. If the EU does not go to the Balkans, the Balkans will come to the EU, in the form of illegal immigration, drugs and crime. In short, it will make no sense to let in two parts of the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia and then Croatia), while keeping the rest out.

Commentary feature. Hostility to expansion of the European Union reflects fears of globalisation