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http://observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,855425,00.html
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Can we make the new Europe work?
Nobody knows for certain how the new Europe will act - but Europe's leaders have much to do to ensure that enlargement does not mark the start of the EU's decline
Kirsty Hughes
Sunday December 8, 2002
The Copenhagen Summit will mark the start of a new European Union very different from the one we know today. The enlargement of the EU represents a new historical phase for Europe - and one full of uncertainty since no one really knows for sure what sort of political and economic animal the enlarged EU will be.
Copenhagen will not only see solutions to the final budget wrangles, especially between the two countries most important to the enlargement process, Germany and Poland, allowing the EU to expand from 15 to 25. It will also approve in principle the goal of Bulgaria and Romania joining by 2007. But most of all the Summit is likely to focus on the highly interrelated issues of a peace settlement for Cyprus - avoiding a divided island joining the EU - and the offer of a date, possibly 2005, for negotiations on accession to start with Turkey. This opens up the prospect of an EU of 28 countries by the end of the decade with borders running all the way to the Middle East - and with more countries from the Balkans to Ukraine queuing up in the distance.
This is the new Europe that has emerged slowly out of the end of the Cold War. But does anybody really know what this enlarged EU will be like? Will it work or could it fall apart? And how will it and how should it change? The new Europe will be highly diverse in all dimensions - geopolitics, economic and social conditions, political priorities. With almost half a billion people, and borders from Russia and Ukraine in the North-East, to the Balkans in the southeast, and the Mediterranean and North Africa in the south and southwest, the EU of the future is going to need more than a broad underpinning of a common European culture to ensure its political, economic and social effectiveness.
Europe's political leaders are not unaware of the challenge. They know that the Nice Treaty - finally accepted by the Irish on a second referendum - only represents marginal tinkering to ensure that the new member states when they join will at least be able to vote in the Council and have members in the European Parliament. More ambitiously, the Convention on the future of Europe, with Giscard d'Estaing in the chair, has been tasked with making the new EU more democratic, politically and operationally efficient, and a strong voice in the world. By next June, it should produce a new European constitution that provides at least some of the answers.
This future of Europe Convention, meeting in public, is undertaking the biggest assessment and reevaluation of the functioning of the EU since it was founded over 40 years ago. It is as if, many years late, the EU motor is finally having a major service. But the question is whether a major service will be adequate instead of constructing an entirely new vehicle. And nobody has a definite answer since nobody knows for sure what the enlarged EU will be like - the car is being serviced and redesigned, but until we get there, we don't know what the road and traffic conditions of the new Europe will look like. It is a major historical leap forward but it is also a leap in the dark.
In this uncertain environment, the work of the Convention should not be underestimated. Much of it is inevitably technical and legalistic. But a huge task of simplifcation is under way which will increase coherence, transparency and comprehensibility of the political and institutional structures of the EU. Complex and incoherent decision-making rules and multiple routes for law-making are all being radically streamlined. But simplification can be politically sensitive. For example, if the vast majority of decisions in future are to be made by majority voting, getting rid of each country's veto, then the EU may stand a chance of not seizing up, but governments and their publics will have to decide if they are ready for this kind of pooling of sovereignty and joint decision-making.
And, even if more efficient, will the enlarged EU be more democratic and more in touch with the public than the current one? Certainly, increased simplicity and transparency will help. And openness should increase too: proposals are likely to ensure that the Council, where governments currently meet and make laws in private, will in future meet in public like any other democratic law-making body.
But much more is needed to build a democratic Europe. The European Council - of heads of state - and the European Commission (which with enlargement will have 25 commissioner) between them share, in effect, the tasks of a European government - they share the executive tasks for European policy. Increased democracy must mean these bodies are truly accountable. Currently, the Commission is weakly accountable to the European Parliament. The European Council is accountable to noone as a whole - though its individual heads of state are accountable separately to their own national parliaments. More political control and oversight is vital.
Democracy is also about active participation and debate of the wider public, with real opportunities for access and input. Yet these aspects are also largely being ignored - the convention is focused on the institutional and legal elements of a new constitution and so risks leaving to one side creative thinking on how to build participative democracy in European politics. It is not enough that a new constitution is simple and accessible - that can only be the first step.
The new Europe also risks failing to play a strong and progressive role in the world - despite the rhetorical commitments of Europe's political leaders. The EU of 25 countries and half a billion people may be an economic giant but a political dwarf just at a time when global challenges and uncertainties call more than ever before for a clear European voice. The future of Europe convention is drafting a statement of values and goals for Europe's role in the world - with welcome emphasis on multilateralism, tackling poverty and discrimination and promoting peace and prosperity.
But these good intentions run far ahead of the EU's ability to deliver a single common voice and strategy on the international stage. Countries like Britain and France remain highly reluctant to act together, even when their views converge, wanting their own individual profiles on the global stage. And they are even more reluctant to undertake the in-depth political discussions that would be needed to come to common positions when their views diverge. Europe's confusion and multiplicity of views over the Iraq crisis show how far we remain from having a common and coordinated European position - whether in the UN or in dialogue with the US. With enlargement, diversity of interests and views in Europe will grow.
Only genuine political will and commitment across all the countries of the new EU could ensure the big steps forward to promote strong European values and policies internationally in the difficult times that lie ahead. In its absence, the EU will look as if it is focusing on organising its own internal policies and political organisation - navel-gazing - while taking little responsibility in the global context. Europe will lose legitimacy on the international stage. Meanwhile at home, if the enlarged EU manages to improve its internal efficiency but not its democracy it may find it has lost legitimacy domestically as well.
The enlargement to be launched at Copenhagen is a historic achievement. But it is only the first step in meeting the European and global political challenges that the new Europe must address. If it fails, then this moment will be seen as a turning point that marked the start of the EU's decline and not its new beginning.
Kirsty Hughes is a writer and consultant on European affairs based in London and Brussels and is senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels"