Eastern Enlargement and the European Union: All Quiet on the “European Front”?
On October 3rd, 1990, the new five East German Bundesländer joined the European Community (EC). This “enlargement” (1) of the EC was made possible by the historical, peaceful revolution in the East and the fall of the Berlin wall twenty years ago on November 9th, 1989. It changed the face and the political geography of re-unified Germany and of the EC internally regarding the power balance within the EC (with Germany now being the biggest member) and externally by opening up the EC’s old frontiers in the East to an unprecedented number of applicants for membership.
What followed after lengthy negotiations was the EC’s/EU’s largest enlargement round to date, including Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia in May 2004 and Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007. Officially, the EC/EU has thus witnessed four enlargement rounds: In 1973, Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the EC in the first, so-called “Northern” enlargement round; in 1981 Greece and in 1986 Portugal and Spain followed in the second, “Southern” enlargement round. In 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU in the so-called “EFTA” enlargement, followed by Eastern enlargement.
Traditionally, these enlargements have been treated as “an incremental process in which new member states attach themselves to the existing membership with only minimal impact on the EU itself” (2). If anything, enlargements have implicitly been presumed to lead to a deepening of European integration both in institutional and political terms. Indeed, several authors have argued that enlargements have acted as major catalysts for institutional and political reform, thus driving the process of deepening.
Eastern enlargement, however, looked different in perspective, raising the question whether the 2004/07 enlargement round might put an end to further “conventional” ways of deepening. Major concerns were voiced, arguing that Eastern enlargement would threaten the stability and workings of the institutions of the EU, its politics and its policies due to the particular traits of this fourth enlargement round:
- the great number of acceding states, which exceeded all earlier enlargements by far;
- the fact that the new member states were, with the exception of Poland, small or very small states, with far-reaching consequences for the distribution of votes in the EU’s decision-making bodies;
- the fact that all new member states were relatively poor, with big agrarian sectors and small or non-competitive industrial sectors;
- the post-communist heritage of the Central and eastern European states.
Looking back, these concerns seem vastly exaggerated. Indeed, all empirical studies so far find that the EU has continued to work in a surprisingly smooth, “business-as-usual”- manner and that the impact of enlargement in 2004/07 has, at least to date, been much less dramatic than many of the original predictions. In addition, the legal output of the EU has so far remained remarkably stable, contradicting concerns about a declining efficiency of the enlarged EU. (3)
So does that mean that really all is quiet on the “European front”?
Probably not. Indeed, some seemingly “small-scale” institutional changes resulting not only, but also from Eastern enlargement raise important questions and concerns about the transparency, accountability and longer-term stability of the EU system. They include:
- a trend towards bureaucratization not only in the Council, benefiting officials as compared to elected and politically accountable actors;
- a rising concern about the transparency and accountability of the system due to the increasing importance of informal arrangements which are (or have to be) used in order to make the formal procedures work for 27 member states;
- concerns about the quality of legislation, which may suffer from lowest-common-denominator-bargaining among now 27 member states with diverging ideas and standards;
- a politically weakened and more “intergovernmental” Commission which has difficulties in providing political leadership and in introducing new projects and proposals into the legislative process;
- a growing demand for coordination and leadership, leading to an increasing trend towards a “presidentialisation” in the Council, the Commission and in Parliament.
Quite a few of these trends had already been observed in the context previous enlargement rounds. This indicates that both the concerns and the actual institutional effects of Eastern enlargement may simply have been amplified by the number and nature of the acceding states, rather than being new.
Yet, Eastern enlargement shows that the longer-term impact of enlargement may transform the EU to a degree that cannot be accommodated any longer by traditional ways of change and adaptation. Symptoms of this mismatch may be seen in the growing controversies over the EU’s next budget, tendencies towards new forms of cooperation outside the treaties and the present “enlargement fatigue” at least on the side of the old member states.
Thus, the development of the EU promises to hold some surprises for the future yet –may they be as ground-breaking as the effects of the fall of the Berlin wall twenty years ago or more subtle.
Dr. Anne Faber, Humboldt University Berlin, Contact: Cette adresse email est protégée contre les robots des spammeurs, vous devez activer Javascript pour la voir.
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(1) The accession of the five new Länder is usually not regarded as a separate enlargement round.
(2) Miles, Lee/Redmond, John 1996: Enlarging the European Union. The Erosion of Federalism? Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 31 (3), p. 285.
(3) For the most extensive study of the effects of Eastern enlargement to date see the excellent analysis presented by Best, Edward/Christiansen, Thomas/Settembri, Pierpaolo (eds.) 2008: The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union- Continuity and Change. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Illustration : MorBCN. Damrak - Amsterdam, Décembre 6, 2006. Flickr.
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