Many countries on the EU's plate
The European Union is about to take in two new members before it has
recovered from the indigestion caused by its biggest-ever enlargement
two-and-a-half years ago. *In May 2004, 10 new countries joined the
club, eight of them former communist states from Central Europe.
The unprecedented speed of this next expansion, albeit a much smaller
one, partly explains why the reaction in many European capitals is, as
one British columnist has put it: "Oh no, do we have to?" The fact that
officially this is not a new enlargement, but part two of the last one,
makes no difference.
"The indigestion from that biggest-ever enlargement is putting the
whole enlargement process at risk," says Hugo Brady of the Centre for
European Reform.
Some countries are still reeling from the scale of migration from
these 10 new members, which no-one predicted. The European Commission
estimated there would be a total of 70,000 to 150,000 migrants per year
throughout the EU, whereas the UK alone is now thought to have received
up to 600,000 over two years.
No-one knows how many migrant workers will make the journey west from
Bulgaria and Romania, in addition to those who have already come either
illegally, or by obtaining work permits.
Romania's population is roughly half the size of Poland's, but it is
double Hungary's or the Czech Republic's. And it is much poorer - its
GDP per head is a third of the EU average, compared with a half in
Poland's case.
The older EU states have also found a couple of the newer states to
be awkward partners at times. Poland startled some EU governments by
fighting tooth and nail over its voting rights in the EU's Council of
Ministers before it had even joined.
More recently, it has argued for the re-introduction of the death
penalty - anathema in many European capitals - and raised hackles by
bringing into a coalition government a party with a reputation for
anti-Semitism and homophobia. Hugo Brady draws parallels with a
"difficult period" which followed the accession of a "somewhat
belligerent and nationalist" Greece in 1981, not long after it emerged
from dictatorship.
The period did not last long, he says. EU membership helped to seal
the country's full transition to democracy, and it quickly became a
valued member of the union. The indigestion problem, however, is more
serious at street level than it is in the corridors of power.
Some Europeans have come to associate enlargement with a heightened
risk of crime, and a source of economic problems from low wages to
unemployment. The fact that more than 60% of people in some European
countries disapprove of further enlargement would be awkward enough at
any time, but is particularly so in the wake of the rejection of the
draft EU constitution by French and Dutch voters last year.
That big slap in the face from two founder members of the union
hugely increased the pressure on the EU to show that it is democratic,
delivering policies that voters want, and not a train running out of
control.
(BBC NEWS)
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