POLITICS: Europe Grows in Size, Not Strength

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Hilmi Toros

ISTANBUL, Apr 21 2003 (IPS) - The European Union has taken a historic step to branch eastward to touch Russia and Lebanon. That makes it large and populous enough to be a superpower rivalling the United States, but it may still end up as only a paper tiger.

European leaders signed a treaty April 16 on the largest expansion of the European Union yet. Under the treaty, ten new members will formally join the EU in May next year if ratification goes according to plan, taking the number of EU states to 25.

Symbolism and lofty words were much in evidence as the new members signed on in Athens in the shadows of the Acropolis, where democracy is said to have had its origin in ancient Greece. The occasion was described as “historic” and “momentous”.

It marked the formal end of the Cold War and reunification of the Old Continent as the former Communist states (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) moved to join the EU along with the Mediterranean islands Malta and Cyprus. Russia, a permanent threat to Western Europe until the Communist regime crumbled, was there to cheer on.

“It is only today that the Berlin Wall has truly fallen,” said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

The head of the European Convention for drafting a new EU constitution, former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, said a draft for the new Constitution would be released at a summit in Greece June 20, despite his earlier calls for more time.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy saw the EU’s eastward expansion as “a debt that destiny is paying back.” He added: “If only my father and mother were alive to see this. It is the realisation of a dream.”

The EU will now be closer to the Middle East than many realise: Cyprus is far closer to Beirut than to Athens.

When the full accession takes place May 1 next year, the area of the EU will increase by almost a quarter, and its population by one-fifth. Seventy-five million people will join the EU’s existing 375 million, making an enlarged Europe the world’s biggest trading bloc.

The EU will also be a bit poorer: the average GDP (gross domestic product) per capita of the newcomers is about 40 per cent of existing EU levels.

But despite a façade of unity, the EU lacks a cohesive foreign policy. Established members are split on major global issues. Britain, Spain and Italy backed the war on Iraq led by the United States, while France and Germany opposed it.

The EU has no permanent armed force, although a new drive is being launched to create a so-called defence union independent of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) alliance.

And if EU decisions were unruly with15 members, there will be 10 more next year, two more in 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania) and possibly Turkey later on. “Political harmony would be difficult among so many nations,” says Italian observer Enrico Brivio.

And if anyone thought Eurocracy is complicated enough, there will be more. The accession treaty runs into 4,900 pages; its full title has 44 words, and it took months to translate into all 21 languages of the enlarged EU.

As the EU expands, it is looking to reinvent itself. “This new Europe will not meet the expectations of its citizens, as the recent crisis showed, if it does not clarify its political ambitions and reform its functions radically,” French President Jacques Chirac said.

Many reforms are being actively promoted. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for example, wants the creation of an EU President in place of the rotating presidency.

The EU is at present keeping up its balancing acts. In a gesture to the United States, the Athens declaration said new and old EU members “are determined to work at all levels to tackle global terrorism and stem the weapons of mass destruction.” But the Union also pledged “its support to the United Nations and its efforts to assure international legitimacy and global responsibility.”

On the growing immigrant population, members declared they “shall respect the dignity and rights of third country nationals living and working in the EU. The values we cherish are not reserved for our own nationals but apply to all those who submit to the laws of our lands.”

But amid jubilation one dispute lingers on: the Cyprus impasse.

With the failure of the plan by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to reunify the island divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the internationally recognised Greek part was taken into EU as representing the whole island, leaving the northern Turkish part in continuing limbo and isolation.

This also represented a new challenge to Turkey, a formal candidate for accession. Formally, Turkey does not recognise the new member Cyprus since it says the country represents only the Greek sector. From the other side, Turkey is seen as “occupying” parts of Cyprus, with some 35,000 of its troops in the northern Turkish part.

That will mean an aspiring EU member is seen as an occupation force on the land of an EU member state. To many Turks, the EU expansion ceremony in Greece was a painful spectacle.