The forthcoming entry into the European Union of ten new countries poses a series of difficult-to-resolve problems Berlusconi reiterated it in his opening speech to the Senate: ahead of any economic and political program, the expansion of the European Union to the East, which should begin in 2004, is a “moral duty,” a sort of reparations act on the part of the wealthy West vis-à-vis an East devastated by 50 years of Communism.
But, as the time approaches, doubts are growing, and general concerns are being replaced on all sides by petty business considerations. There is a myriad of questions. What will we gain when the Union goes from 15 to 25 or 27 members? What are the risks? What are the financial implications involved in the entry of new countries with a per capita income that is less than half the European average? People often reacted negatively in June when the Treaty of Nice (which, note well, is not the origin of the expansion but merely introduces some essential modifications in the functioning of the European institutions) was submitted to a referendum for approval by the citizens of Ireland - to date the top beneficiaries of the unified market - and the answer came back “No!” In order to keep this vote from tripping up the entire mechanism, the European Commission will now literally have to bend over backwards. It must be said right off that the doubts of so many Europeans were not mere fantasy. Anyone who has had the opportunity to travel through the Polish countryside or the mountains of Slovakia has been able to appreciate the chasm that still separates these countries from ours, and the consequent difficulty of integrating them. The prospects are even worse if we consider Romania and Bulgaria, the most down-at-the-heel of the candidate countries, whose membership will in any case have to be put off until the end of the decade. Nor do the problems end here: during their time under Moscow’s umbrella, the countries of the East developed economic, legal and welfare systems completely at odds with those of the Union, and the effort required to make them compatible has been keeping the respective authorities busy for years now. This involves transferring into the legislation of the candidate countries some 80,000 pages of laws, known as acquis communautaire, which govern life in the Union often in the minutest details, and eliminating everything that conflicts with this legislative bundle. When negotiations began, 31 areas for intervention were identified, for which it will be necessary to close the files to everyone’s satisfaction before the membership treaty can be signed: even though the thorniest problems were deliberately left for last, to date none of the candidate countries has gone beyond 20 percent, and some are even stalled at six. In many cases, perhaps too many, it will be necessary to grant temporary waivers and various exceptions that will make the functioning of the expanded Union more complicated throughout the transition phase. The expansion idea came about soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the prospect of extending into East-Central Europe the political stability and economic wellbeing that we have enjoyed over the last half-century, and of repeating the success achieved with Spain, Portugal and Greece, brilliantly reintegrated into the democratic context after long phases of dictatorship. For Germany, which became the largest EU power with reunification, expansion to the East also meant repositioning itself within the Union and thus re-establishing its influence in a region that, prior to WWII, gravitated in its orbit. Naturally on everyone’s part there was an interest in expanding the unified market to new countries eager for consumer goods, thus obtaining an additional outlet for our industries. In order to make expansion more appetizing to somewhat skeptical public opinion, the operation was in any case presented as a real bargain, minimizing at least initially the problems that might arise. However, these problems did not take long to come to the fore in all their complexity, gradually pushing back the announced dates for completion of the negotiations and engendering a growing frustration on all sides. This frustration was summed up by the Hungarian prime minister, Orban, with the comment, “Every year since 1995, it has been promised that we would become EU members within five years.” The biggest conundrum, right from the start, has been agriculture. Right now, about 40% of the Community budget goes to farm subsidies; it is only through these subsidies that EU farmers manage to remain competitive in the world market. In many ways it is a perverse system that penalizes consumers, violates the regulations of the World Trade Organization, and causes market distortions, but that 40 years ago was deemed indispensable for ensuring Europe’s food autonomy and the settlement of the countryside. The biggest beneficiaries are the French, followed by the Dutch and the Danes, but even we take advantage of it, especially in the wine and olive-oil industries. Unfortunately, if the current system were extended to all the new members, many of which suffer from extensive and fairly backward farming, the costs would become absolutely prohibitive. It therefore becomes essential to reform our common agriculture policy so that the amount currently allocated to it will be enough for all: a daunting undertaking, given the influence that the agricultural lobbies still wield. For now, formulas - sometimes rather captious - are being sought for a compromise that will not mean excessive sacrifices for the old members but that will not give the new ones the impression of being treated as poor relations, either. Second on the list is the redistribution of regional funds, which the EU has to date generously made available to areas where per capita income is less than 75% of the Community average, and which have been decisive in aiding Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece to catch up on their backwardness compared to the other countries (and which could have given a fine push to our own South, if only our governments had been capable of making use of them). With the entry of twelve new members, all poor or even very poor compared to the Fifteen, the Union’s average income will drop by 16%, and thus many of the current beneficiary regions will be excluded, while fully 51 of the 53 regions into which Eastern Europe is divided will be added to the list. It is obvious that the governments of Madrid, Lisbon, Athens (and in part even Rome) are not happy about the end of this manna that has enabled them to fund a large number of major public-works projects, and that they are seeking by every means to prolong the current system to the detriment of the new arrivals. But the prospect of getting aid from the West is one of the strongest arguments used by the governments of the candidate countries to convince their constituents of the rightness of the European choice, and the introduction of new criteria for the distribution of funds would be taken very badly. Especially in the smaller countries, where the impact of foreign investments is stronger, the dream is to imitate Ireland, which in 25 years of EU membership has transformed itself - thanks as well to an intelligent fiscal policy - from caboose to a cutting-edge country, with a per capita income that has surpassed that of the United Kingdom. However, it is unlikely that this miracle will repeat itself, except perhaps for tiny Estonia which, taken under the wing of the Scandinavian countries, has begun to take off even before it gets into the Union. When negotiations began, membership in the European Union appeared to the peoples of the East as the panacea for all ills, the highway for recovering lost territory as quickly as possible, a sort of insurance for the future. Even now, a majority still think that way, and some even welcome the chance to don the legislative jacket that the EU is forcing them to wear because it represents in any case a guarantee against any political disruptions. But the insistence with which the rich countries defend their own interests, the difficulty of assimilating quickly an often undigested acquis, and the fear that the loathed subjection to the USSR will be replaced by a new one towards the Brussels bureaucracy has already reduced the consensus that the Union enjoys. From Warsaw to Bratislava, for example, the fear is very strong that the European prohibition against subsidies to industry will lead - as happened in the early 1990’s in the former German Democratic Republic - to the closing of many industries inherited from the Communist era, and to the consequent loss of some tens of thousands of jobs. It is also in this context that the two countries bordering on Eastern Europe, Germany and Austria, have so vigorously raised the problem of internal mobility. If the EU rules were applied to the letter, on the day following their admission to the Union the citizens of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia would in fact automatically acquire the right to move into the countries of the old Union, to look for work there and to benefit from their social services. Forecasts of the number of persons ready to emigrate to the West on X Day and to offer themselves at favorable conditions in the increasingly liberalized labor market vary from 335,000 to 700-800,000 a year, but they are in any case sufficient to be frightening. And this fright increases disproportionately with the realization that six million Gypsies still live in Eastern Europe, discriminated against, sometimes oppressed, and therefore particularly anxious to leave; they are undoubtedly the least welcome immigrants in the entire world. This is why Bonn and Vienna are seeking a seven-year moratorium - albeit reviewable after an organizing phase - on the free movement of manpower; in exchange, they are disposed to grant an equally long grace period on application of one of the fundamental principles of the unified market, the right of every EU citizen to acquire property in any other member country. Without this safety clause, wealthy Westerners could buy prized houses and lands in Eastern Europe at prices that are for them rock-bottom. Slovenia’s obstinate resistance to Italy’s request to grant to the exiles of 1947 the right to take back the houses and lands expropriated from them by Tito is now being repeated by Poland and the Czech Republic, which fear an “invasion” of their borderlands by the Germans kicked out in 1945 (or their descendents): a mass of more than 10 million people, among whom there is surely no shortage of nostalgics. There are dozens of other reasons making integration so difficult: these range from import duties on cigarettes - much lower in the East than in the West - to the problem of too many new languages that would obtain citizenship rights in Brussels, disproportionately increasing translation costs (the alternative - adopting English for everyone - is naturally viewed by the French as a smokescreen). There is the issue of the entry of the new members into the unified currency, which many consider essential but which according to the experts could conceivably further weaken the already not-too-healthy euro. And perhaps above all these, there is the fear that, after the near-failure of the Nice summit, not even the new inter-government conference set for 2004 will manage to give the Union new institutions that will make it governable after expansion. Finally, under the negotiating table there is a “bomb” that is little talked about, perhaps for fear of bad luck, but that diplomacy is unable to defuse: the candidacy of Cyprus. The little republic has been knocking on the EU’s doors for a long time now; it was one of the countries that responded most promptly to get itself in line with the acquis, and (together with Malta) it has the support of all the Mediterranean countries, eager to create a counterweight to the entry of so many Nordic countries, and it is even in line with the Maastricht parameters. The problem is that for thirty years the island has been split in two parts, armed against each other: the Greek south that wants to join the Union, and the Turkish north that is a sort of protectorate of Ankara. Every attempt at reunifying them has failed, and to avoid conflicts the presence of a UN peacekeeping force is still needed. This means that it may be only the south that enters the EU, but if that happens, it would open up a very serious and destabilizing crisis with Turkey, which is already very irritated over the continual (and according to many, definitive) postponement of its membership negotiations. Some member countries therefore believe that Cyrpus’ candidacy should be put on hold. But in the face of this simple hypothesis Athens reacted with a threat, a fairly real one, to veto the entire expansion process. Even if the EU manages to complete its expansion to 25 within three years despite the maze of ratifications by all current members, the question of its final borders remains open. It is now considered a done deal that, after Romania and Bulgaria, one day Albania and the countries of the former Yugoslavia will also be admitted, thus completing the unification of the west-central part of the Continent (with the exception of Switzerland, for which the red carpet is always ready but whose inhabitants for the time being don’t want to hear about it). But what will happen to Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and even Russia? And if, beyond Turkey, even Georgia and Armenia should come knocking? In any event, how could such a diverse and immense Union be made to function? The future is truly in Jove’s lap, but fortunately the problems of a 40-member Europe are on hold for our children, if not our grandchildren.