Eastern boost for far-right parties

The main political impact of Romania and Bulgaria joining the EU will be felt in the European Parliament where the arrival of MEPs from nationalist parties will pave the way for the far-right to form a political group for the first time.

One MEP from Bulgaria’s National Union Attack (Natsionalen Sayuz Ataka) party and up to five deputies from Romania’s nationalist and xenophobic Greater Romania Party (Partidul România Mare) are expected to join a new group, Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty. The group will be chaired by French MEP Bruno Gollnisch who is second-in-command of the Front National and who has been accused of questioning the extent to which Nazis used gas chambers to exterminate Jews in the Second World War. The group is also expected to include Austrian, Belgian and Italian MEPs. Under Parliament rules, forming a political group requires 20 MEPs from six different member states.

Otherwise, the entry of Romania and Bulgaria in January will give a boost to the numbers of the Alliance and Liberals for Europe (ALDE) group in the European Parliament. ALDE will gain an extra 16 MEPs, taking its total to 116. The Party of European Socialists will gain 18 new members, 12 from Romania and six from Bulgaria, while the EPP-ED will get 13 new MEPs, nine from Romania and four from Bulgaria.

The existing observers became full MEPs from 1 January and will keep their positions until the next round of national elections expected in May in Romania. It is not clear when Bulgaria will hold elections.

The addition of Romanian and Bulgarian MEPs increases the total number of MEPs to 785 but this will be reduced to 736 from 2009. All national delegations will be cut, apart from Germany which will keep its 99 deputies and the five smallest EU countries which will maintain their current number of MEPs - Slovenia (7), Estonia (6), Luxembourg (6), Cyprus (6) and Malta (5). Romania will have 33 MEPs and Bulgaria 17 from 2009.

In the Council of Ministers Romania will have 14 votes and Bulgaria ten. Bulgaria will therefore have the same number of votes as Sweden and Austria while Romania will have the highest number of votes after the six biggest countries - Germany, the UK, France and Italy (29 each), Spain and Poland (27 each). It will have more votes than the Netherlands (13), Greece, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary and Portugal (all 12). In line with the increase in the EU’s population, the threshold of 62% (representing a qualified majority of the EU’s population) is set at 305.5 million people. Under the Nice treaty, when there is a qualified majority for a decision in the Council a member state can ask to check whether the number of votes also represents an adequate majority of the EU’s population. The qualified majority is set at 255 votes from a total of 345.

But Romania and Bulgaria getting voting rights in Council, as opposed to having observer status, is not expected to make a major difference in the near-term. EU officials say that the ten new member states which joined the Union in 2004 have been reluctant to assert themselves in the weekly meetings of EU ambassadors, the Committee of Permanent Represent-atives (COREPER).

The debates continue to be dominated by ambassadors from the EU15, according to officials, unless the subject concerns an extremely sensitive national interest, such as relations with Russia in the case of Poland and Lithuania. Given that Romania and Bulgaria’s performance in adapting their laws to EU standards will be monitored for months to come, they are not expected to play a major role in debates and decisions in COREPER and Council sessions for some time.

The main political impact of Romania and Bulgaria joining the EU will be felt in the European Parliament where the arrival of MEPs from nationalist parties will pave the way for the far-right to form a political group for the first time.