The Sunday Times 15th December 2002
MUSLIM nations from north Africa could be included in a new wave of expansion for the European Union under proposals being considered by the government.
The plan could mean countries such as Morocco and Tunisia being brought into a hugely extended EU. At their summit in Copenhagen last week, EU leaders decided to admit 10 new members, mostly former communist countries in eastern Europe.
Last Friday they also took the historic step of agreeing to a date for considering negotiations with Turkey, which, supported by Britain, is pressing to become what would be the EU’s first Muslim member.
The EU will decide in December 2004 whether Turkey has met the human rights and democracy criteria which would enable entry negotiations to begin the year after. Tony Blair is understood to believe that an EU move into the Muslim world is vital for stability, particularly in the light of the threat from Islamic terrorism.
He said in Copenhagen: "I believe this is of huge importance for Turkey, Europe and indeed Britain. Turkey is a country with a long and proud history, also a country that is Muslim. To all the people who thought the EU could not reach out in this way, I think we have shown we can."
A government spokesman added: "Europe is reaching out in a practical way to Turkey and through that to the rest of the Islamic world."
However, it was clear that the admission of Turkey, likely to be in 2010 if the criteria are met, is seen by Britain as only the first step in a wider expansion. "There is no reason why north African countries could not join," one British minister said. "The Romans called the Mediterranean "our sea" and there’s no reason why we should not do the same.";
In France and Germany, however, there has been growing opposition to the idea of Muslim nations being considered. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president who heads the convention set up to produce a formal constitution for the EU, has warned that admitting Turkey would sound the “end of the EU”. He said Turkey had a different history and culture to Europe in a clear reference to its Islamic nature.
Foreign Office sources, by contrast, cite Tunisia and Morocco as potential members.
The Copenhagen summit agreed to admit 10 new countries, making a total of 25 nations. Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia would all become full members from May 1, 2004, expanding the EU to 455m people at a cost of £27 billion in their first three years of membership.
Talks are in train with a view to Bulgaria and Romania joining in 2007, and exploratory negotiations have begun with Ukraine and Belarus.
The EU has agreed to take in another 75m citizens from 10 countries, and Turkey may be next. David Smith and Eben Black chart the future of a Europe that could one day extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and include Russia
For Abdullah Gul, the new Turkish prime minister, it was a rude introduction to European Union affairs. First, flanking Tony Blair in a cold Copenhagen last week, he discovered that British prime ministers attending EU summits bring their domestic troubles with them. Then he collided with realpolitik, the harsh reality of European politics: what France and Germany want, they get.
On this occasion it was a case of what France and Germany didn’t want, Turkey didn’t get — despite the support of the embattled Blair.
The Turks have been knocking on the door of the EU, in its various forms, for four decades. Now they have a government that is determined to gain admission. As well as Britain, Turkey’s neighbour — and historic foe — Greece supports it. So, from the side lines, does the United States.
For many French and Germans, however, the European club remains an exclusively Christian project: where will it all end if a largely Asian Muslim country is allowed in? Their political leaders have a less atavistic objection: the more the EU grows, the less France and Germany will be able to go on controlling it.
For now, Franco-German muscle has prevailed: Gul was sent home fuming. Talks on Turkey’s application for membership are on hold yet again and will remain so for at least the next two years.
But how long can this black balling go on? While spurning the Turks, the EU welcomed 10 other new members last week, most of them former Soviet satellites. Is its growth finite? Or is it almost inevitable that “Europe” will one day be a club that stretches far into Asia and even Africa?
If so, what will the consequences be for our own small nation, relatively affluent but isolated on the outer reaches of a monolith?
BLAIR went to the Copenhagen summit, the most crucial European gathering for a decade, well-briefed with pro-Turkish arguments. He was not best prepared for battle, however. Cheriegate dogged him. And, unaccountably, he was one of the few leaders not staying at the Danish capital’s best hotel, the Hotel D’Angleterre. Instead, the prime minister was marooned at the less elegant Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in the centre of the city.
He found time, however, to make it up with Jacques Chirac, the French president — they had a falling-out at the last EU summit, when Chirac accused Blair of being “very rude” to him. Now they enjoyed a light-hearted chat — in French — and were seen laughing together over a dinner of monkfish and venison.
Both were able to celebrate the summit’s one success: admitting the new countries, who bring the EU’s membership to 25. If all goes to plan, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will become part of the EU family in only 17 months’ time.
With their accession, the EU will reach the vaguely defined border lands of old “Europe”. This is where the distinct Franco-German and British visions of the future divide.
The Franco-German view — that the EU should be seen as a “European club”, excluding more distant nations — is heavily influenced by Jacques Delors, the former European commission president. He sees “deepening” the EU — code for greater political and economic integration — as the big priority that should take precedence over enlargement.
“Europe should be a common project, owned by its member states and citizens,” said Guillaume Durand, an analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. “We need a union that serves its members and that is ambitious in areas such as a common foreign and security policy.
“I definitely don’t think Turkey should be part of that and the same is true of Russia and the Ukraine.”
Against that, said UK sources, the enlargement momentum is only now gathering. Britain may have lost the Copenhagen battle for early talks on Turkish entry, but the government argues it is winning the war for an EU that is more “inclusive” — code for wider membership.
Turkey’s history, British sources point out, is inseparable from Europe’s, whether one looks back to the ancient Greeks or to the subsequent Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires. One minister accompanying Blair said the EU should go further — opening its doors not just to Turkey but to other Muslim nations.
“The Romans, who ruled Europe for centuries, called the Mediterranean ‘Our Sea’ and there is no reason to think any differently now,” he said.
Despite political problems in some north African countries, notably Algeria and Libya, countries such as Tunisia and Morocco are seen by the British government as potential future candidates.
If enlargement into Africa is a possibility, further expansion east is a probability. Bulgaria and Romania, which did not make it into the 2004 group, hope to join in 2007. Ukraine, Belarus and even Mother Russia, with its population of nearly 150m, are seen as potential candidates.
Could the EU, a largely Christian grouping of 380m people — already on course to rise to more than 450m as a result of enlargement — become a multi-religious grouping of nearly 1 billion people, spilling over to other continents? The answer partly depends on whether potential candidates can pass the political and economic tests for membership.
Nine years ago, also meeting in Copenhagen, EU leaders agreed on the conditions under which new members would be admitted.
Candidate countries, they agreed, would be required to have “achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, and the existence of a functioning market economy”. Not only that but candidates would need to demonstrate “adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union”.
That provided a green light to the former communist countries of eastern Europe. The message was straightforward. Embrace market capitalism and democracy and you will be allowed into the rich man’s club that the EU has become.
It worked, but it also whetted the appetite of others. Turkey, which signed an association agreement with the EU as long ago as 1963 — saw its chance. It raised questions, too, about the limits of the EU.
In Asia, the so-called Asean-plus-three grouping — the southeast Asian nations plus China, Japan and Korea — can boast nearly 2 billion people. The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has brought together America, Canada and Mexico and is forging new relationships with the countries of Latin America. In this context, where does the EU stop?
“My own view is that we should go back to the original treaties, so that member countries should be European and should have shared values,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London.
“That means geography excludes the countries of North Africa, and for that matter Israel, while the question of shared values probably excludes Russia in my lifetime. The psychology of the ruling elite is light years away from membership.”
Brussels appears to agree. “We cannot keep on enlarging indefinitely, taking in every country that might apply to join,” Romano Prodi, the commission president has said.
Gunther Verheugen, the commissioner responsible for enlargement, says that the EU needs “new ties, more common interests, more co-operation” with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, “but this does not mean joining the EU, at least not for the foreseeable future”. But these things can change rapidly. Barely more than a decade ago, the countries of eastern Europe appeared permanently estranged from the EU. Now they are about to join.
Opinion polls in Moscow show that the public backs entry by three to one. Once Russia sees its neighbours prosper from membership, as they already are by attracting inward investment, that pressure is likely to increase.
So far President Vladimir Putin’s main concern has been over the future of Kaliningrad, a depressed Russian outpost of 1m people with serious drug and health problems, which will be surrounded by the enlarged EU. But the Russians, who pushed hard to be represented at the G8, the rich countries’ forum, may also start to push more aggressively for EU membership.
EUROPEAN integration started in 1950 when France proposed “the first concrete foundation of a European federation”, beginning with the coal and steel community. It took another two decades before the original six members — Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — admitted Denmark, Ireland and Britain. Greece joined in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1986 and Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995.
Creating an EU of 15 members took more than 40 years. Within two it will have increased to 25, with other countries in the waiting room. The process of enlarging the EU has a lot further to run. Whether bigger means better, and whether it can operate any more successfully than now, is another matter.
One dampener on Blair’s zeal for enlargement could be the realisation that it makes an existing problem worse. Britain could soon find itself a magnet for legal migrants from eastern Europe, following the government’s decision not to limit the free movement of labour when the EU expands in 2004.
Regional polls suggest more than 5m eastern Europeans from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, just four of the 10 candidate countries, will “actively” seek jobs in western Europe once they are eligible to do so.
Almost the same number said they would “probably” look for work abroad and a further 6m that they would consider a job in the West if one was offered to them.
While the same polls show Germany is the most sought-after destination, its current economic plight and its decision to block migrant labour from the new member countries for a period has bumped Britain up to first place.
The incentives would be huge. Poles, Czechs and Hungarians currently working illegally in countries that which intend to block migration have no social welfare, no health insurance, and daily run the risk of arrest and deportation.
Government sources insisted that the risks were exaggerated. “We have a programme of managed migration in place and we do not expect to see a dramatic rise in immigration when the EU takes in new members,” said a Home Office spokesman.
But if this is the danger when the EU is admitting 10 new members with relatively small populations, the risk will be multiplied by allowing larger, poorer countries in, whether from North Africa or parts of the former Soviet Union. That might give even the most ardent enthusiast for a more inclusive EU bloc pause for thought.
Additional reporting: Justin Sparks
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