AMBASSADOR'S CORNER
 

WEEKLY MESSAGE FROM AMBASSADOR JOHN BRUTON

June 13, 2005

One of the worries about the rejection of the draft EU Constitution by voters in France and the Netherlands is that it might end the prospect of further enlargement of the EU. This would be bad news in the Western Balkans, Turkey and Ukraine, where the prospect of eventual EU membership has helped drive reform and reconciliation with neighbours.

Not all that much has really changed. Every enlargement of the European Union requires, and always required, the consent of every one of the existing members. Remember France’s veto of British membership in the 1960s.

In 1993 in Copenhagen, all then-Member States agreed unanimously on the criteria that new states would have to meet to join. These included “stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressures and market forces within the Union.” These criteria are often quoted, and their existence has been very helpful in pushing internal reform in would-be EU members.

But other criteria that were set out in Copenhagen are less often quoted, especially here in the United States. These require that intending EU members are willing to take on the obligations of membership “including political, economic and monetary union.” Support for political union is thus an obligation of EU membership – for new as well as for existing members.

The Copenhagen criteria went on to acknowledge that when a country joins the EU, that affects both the country itself and the existing members. They stated that “The Union’s capacity to absorb new members, while maintaining the momentum of European integration, is also an important consideration.”

The important point I would like to stress from these criteria are the commitments to “political union” and to the continued “momentum of European integration.” Of course these commitments apply to existing members as well as to new ones.

It is not credible, as some did, to object to Polish plumbers coming to work in your country or to firms from your country setting up business in Poland and then, at the same time, to say that you are in favour of a political union with Poland and of closer European integration of your country with Poland!

Some objections to enlargement might diminish if Europe’s economy started to grow more quickly.

While some EU governments are borrowing quite heavily, the citizens of the same countries are saving a great deal out of current income because they are worried about the impact of future government cutbacks on their personal finances. If the governments could get the necessary reforms over and done with quickly, there might then be a release of these excess private savings especially if that was combined with an easing of monetary policy by the European Central Bank. An economic stimulation pact along these lines is worth thinking about.

Meanwhile, we should sketch out in more detail for our citizens our vision for a European “political union” and the goals, benefits and limits of maintaining the “momentum of European integration.” Part of the difficulty with the European Constitution was that it contained much detail on the means towards these ends, but did not paint a clear enough picture of the ends themselves. Neither the EU Constitution nor the European project in general draws on people’s emotions in the way that the rituals of American patriotism draw Americans together. Europe must be a Union of hearts as well as heads.

The project of peaceful, voluntary, European integration is actually every bit as ambitious, as inspiring and as worthy of sacrifice as the American dream. European leaders have got to find a language that conveys that to their citizens.

The European Union is not a marketplace from which nations should always want to bring home more than they contributed. It is a political construction without precedent in history.

It is both vaultingly ambitious and inherently fragile. The European Union, like all democratic projects, depends on continuing popular consent. But it offers Europe’s peoples a chance to shape the world around them, rather than merely be shaped by it.

Europeans are only 7% of the world’s population. Even the biggest European country is too small to exert much influence in a world where events 7,000 miles away can affect you within a minute.

The European Union is a building block of a safer world, and its leaders should have great confidence in it and should convey that confidence to their citizens.

Please send me your comments about this or any of my weekly messages, or other EU matters. I look forward to hearing from you!



John Bruton

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