Ben Pickering: We’re a long way from Copenhagen

Ben is currently researching his PhD on EU eastward enlargement

The developing schism across the enlarged EU over further expansion is a unique opportunity to reshape it from within.

Enlargement has expanded the EU deep into the former Soviet bloc.  It has 25 diverse Member States (and with Bulgaria and Romania joining in January, 27), ranging from Germany (population 80 million) to Malta (population just 400,000) and everything in between.

Each has its own history, its own agenda, and its own priorities.  This became clear with the Constitution fiasco and the negotiations over the EU’s 2007-2013 Budget.  While 2004’s enlargement was a success, it has brought the EU to a fork in the road.

Many believe that the EU has reached (even surpassed) its capacity to integrate new Members.  Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso added his voice to those calling for a halt on Monday, saying that “it would be unwise to bring in other member states…before we have sorted out the institutional question”.

In other words, once Bulgaria and Romania are in, we should shut the door – for now.

The Chancelleries of Germany and Austria and the present occupier of the Elysee Palace blame “enlargement fatigue” for the failure of the Constitution, and for bringing the process of widening and deepening – a constant feature of previous enlargements – to a standstill.

The position the EU finds itself in is of its own making.  After the Cold War, eastern Europeans tore down their walls, embracing market economies and democracy.  The EU responded to the impending clamour for EU membership by developing the “Copenhagen Criteria”.

These conditions – a pre-requisite of membership – were designed to provide a stop-tap for demands for membership.  In reality, it gave potentially false hope to countries like Turkey and in the Balkans.

The most crucial condition was that candidates had to be able to adopt the “acquis communautaire”, the ever-growing list of laws, rules, regulations and directives that make up EU law, prior to accession.

The irony of the “acquis” is that to join the EU today, a candidate has to be more like the EU than the EU is itself.  A supranational, undemocratic body that has failed to have its own accounts passed for 11 years requires a functioning market economy with strict controls to tackle corruption – this from a body that allows its Commissioners to employ their dentists as Special Scientific Advisers!

The result of the Copenhagen Criteria was the 2004 enlargement – an ambitious project incorporating 10 new Members immediately into the EU’s structures (with some temporary safeguard clauses on agriculture subsidies and freedom of movement).

While it may have been better to “drip feed” new Members into the Union, the difficulties of letting one in over another would have stored up veto problems for the future.  The inclusion of the Greek sector of Cyprus has already had a significant impact on Turkey’s long-standing membership application.

For years, the concept of Turkey joining was dismissed as hypothetical at best.  It first applied in 1959, becoming an Associate Member in 1965, but allowed no further until the reforming Ergödan government swept to power in 2002.

Turkey’s rapid development into a country that meets the “Copenhagen Criteria” caught the EU on the hop.  It has also focused minds on its “absorption capacity” – code for how far the core Members are prepared to let enlargement dilute their integration plans.

With President Chirac declaring that France will hold a referendum on Turkey accession, and similar attitudes in the German and Austrian Chancelleries, the fault lines are set for a showdown between Turkey’s supporters in the EU, broadly the intergovernmentalists, and their opponents, the federalists.

However, Turkey’s application has ramifications beyond the Bosphorus, particularly for the UK.   

If Turkish membership is vetoed, then the EU will have missed a rare opportunity to bridge the gap between the Judeo-Christian and Islamic worlds.  But if Turkish membership is granted, then the integration dream of Spinelli and Spaak will truly be over.

Turkey has a population twice that of Britain and France, and 40 million greater than Germany.  It would dwarf the remainder of the EU’s Member States.  Even if permanent restrictions on labour movement are placed on Turkey (which is against one of the founding principles of the Union), Turkey will still have the largest voting bloc.

There’s no way that Germany is going to demote itself to second fiddle from the front row of the European orchestra.  The EU’s structures, already creaking, will grind to a halt.

If full Turkish membership isn’t offered, replaced by what Merkel has described as a “privileged partnership”, the Turks will be disappointed.  However, it will be a wonderful opportunity for Britain, the sceptical Scandinavian countries (including current non-Member Norway), the more sceptical NMS (like Poland and the Czech Republic) and even little old Switzerland to step back to a more arms-length relationship, like that being offered to Turkey.

This battle for the heart and soul of Europe should be music to the ears of British Conservatives, long sceptical of the drive towards further integration but hitherto a lonely voice at European summits. While the Chinese may have regarded it as a curse, there are indeed interesting times ahead.

Comments

[Serf]

To be pedantic.

Turkey's current population is 70-75 Million. The number given is most likely a projection.

Ergödan = Erdogan

I fear that we are encouraging the current Islamist government to dismantle the (admittedly) undemocratic military oversight, whilst simultaneously knowing that we are never going to let the country join. The result is almost guaranteed to be a completely undemocratic Islamic government at some point in the future.

[Andrew Young]

Ben,

Was wondering what your thoughts were on an issue that doesn't really bother me, but obsesses many Europeans and a lot of the European debate on the issue of Turkey.

There is a popular opposition to Turkey's membership on the basis that culturally they are very different, that there exists an unbridgable cultural gap between christian european culture and a muslim asian culture that will make the integration of Turkey impossible beyond the obvious structural problems due to its size/relative poverty etc.

I wonder if this is perhaps an argument we are missing by focussing on our short term preference for expansion. What are your thoughts?

[Angelo Basu]

The widening of the EU membership since the accession of the last 10 new members suggests that there is an opportunity for recasting the EU away from the concept of a federal state and back towards something which could gain support even from Eurosceptics. Rather than bow to the UKIP lobby, this presents us with the opportunity to put forward a coherent oppositional stance to the way that the EU is currently run.

[Angelo Basu]

Re Turkey and reconciling cultures. While a predominantly Muslim country, it has spent the best part of a century deliberately looking Westwards. The difficulty is that there are really 2 Turkeys, the Western urbanised part and the vast Eastern part which is more of a Central Asian/Middle Eastern traditional society.

However, if Turkey is a realistic candidate, surely Israel must also be. If that were to be the case it would be much more difficult to resist increasing EU competence in defence and foreign affairs. That said, if an EU including a large Muslim state and Israel could find common cause it might put pressure on those rogue states that wish to kill Israel.

[Ben Pickering]

Serf: Thanks for your post. You are quite right about the population discrepancy. As for ERDOGAN, all I can say in mitigation is R and D are close to each other on the Qwerty keyboard and the eyes of many a proof reader missed it! :)

We are in serious danger of negotiating in bad faith with Turkey (and the other Balkan countries who do not currently have candidate status). Through the acquis, we ask that candidate countries become more like the EU than the EU itself. If the end-game of this process is that Turkey is given some kind of privileged partnership (and this is used as a model for the Balkan states not currently in the EU) then you are quite right, there is going to be a lot of bad blood.

Andy: It is true that in the short- to medium-term Turkey is going to be a drain on EU resources - as were the New Member States that joined in 2004, as were the southern Meditteranean states that joined in the 1980s (the latter have been major beneficiaries of structural funds). Turkey has nowhere else to go really - it's hardly going to set up the Middle East Free Trade Area with Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia! It is culturally part of the European sphere (as are some of the north African countries) and we should embrace that.

[David Banks]

On a historical note , didn't the European states fight the Battle of Lepanto centuries ago to prevent the same situation that will be acheived if Turkey accedes to EU membership , ie a muslim state as an integral part of Europe? Lets resist it tooth and nail.

[David Banks]

Thats the Third Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Feel free to check Wikipedia , but it was winning this battle that saved Europe from turkey and muslim influence

[Mark Wadsworth]

The debate on whether Turkey should join EU is intractable either way.

On the other hand, once we've left the EU and re-joined EFTA (while remaining outside the EEA, which is quasi-EU), maybe EFTA will invite Turkey to join. And Israel as well for that matter. Free trade = good!

Over to Angelo Basu.

[Serf]

We are in serious danger of negotiating in bad faith with Turkey

That is my worry. It would be better to simply say no than continue as we are doing.

[SimonNewman]

I think (IMNSHO) that the best thing for the EU would be for it to follow its original conception as an essentially Catholic, French-led, federal state/empire. The Protestant countries of northern Europe, and Turkey, are never really going to fit in unless they abandon their own cultures, and would be better off out.

[Denis Cooper]

As I'm totally opposed to politicians elected in immediately neighbouring foreign countries having a vote on the laws of my country, obviously I'm not going to support politicians from the other end of Europe and beyond having that right.

The truth is that the vaunted Conservative strategy of promoting "widening" to prevent "deepening" has come badly unstuck, and predictably so because it disregarded the basic realities of the treaty commitment to "ever closer union", plus institutions - the Commission and the Court of Justice - whose members have a duty to constantly press for that process to be taken further.

Obviously with each step in the process of integration, it becomes that bit harder for a new member state to fit in satisfactorily without causing serious problems for itself and/or for all or some of the existing member states, and eventually the answer will have to be a potentially antagonising "No, we can't let you join".

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

"If Turkish membership is vetoed, then the EU will have missed a rare opportunity to bridge the gap between the Judeo-Christian and Islamic worlds."

This is one of my major concerns about the overtures to Turkey about joining the European Union - they are a token gesture (aargh mangled syntax!) which amounts to little more than an olive branch to Islam.

There are far better ways of engaging with Islam than welcoming to the EU a country which:

- maintains an illegal occupation of almost half an EU member state;
- oppresses a significant minority of its population;
- has an appalling human and civil rights record;
- actively seeks to block recognition of atrocities it carried out in the past;
- remains an economic basketcase in a vast chunk of the country.

[ukout]

Ben Pickering says: "It is true that in the short- to medium-term Turkey is going to be a drain on EU resources - as were the New Member States that joined in 2004, as were the southern Meditteranean states that joined in the 1980s (the latter have been major beneficiaries of structural funds)."

What do you mean by "going to be"? Turkey already is getting big time EU funding. What do you means by "as were" and "have been" a drain on funds referring to the 2004 joiners - the 2004 lot still are taking massive funding and will be for the forseeable future. Of course the UK is providing a major chunk of this largesse?

The notion that eastward expansion will allow reform of the EU in the direction of a return to national autonomy is pure fantasy - central control and a deliberate plan to break down the national states by stealth is increasing day after day and will not be surrendered this side of the economic collapse of the EU.

[Jon Gale]

If expanding the EU to include Turkey would cause the EU to collapse it might be OK. But its more likely we will just be paying massively through the nose to drag this backward country, and the others of the balkans, up the the standards of the UK. We are still paying for roads to be built in France, Spain and Italy for Gods sake! Not to mention the immigration...

...its got to the point where I can only hope it will be so bad that many more people are prepared to publicly support UK withdrawal.