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Europe prepares to make history
Dec 11th 2002
From The Economist Global Agenda
The Copenhagen summit on European Union enlargement on December 12th-13th
could turn out to be the most significant gathering of European leaders for
some years
HISTORIC is an overused word, but in the case of the European Unions
Copenhagen summit it might just turn out to be an appropriate description. The
EUs leaders are meeting in the Danish capital on Thursday and Friday to
finalise preparations for a big bang enlargement that will raise the Unions
membership from 15 to 25. And that is not all. The EU is also expected to do
something that was considered unthinkable until recently: offer Turkey a firm
date for entry talks.
The centrepiece of the summit will be formal acceptance of ten applicant
countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia from
Central Europe; the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; and the
islands of Malta and Cyprus. These countries are due to conclude their long
and often painful accession negotiations in Copenhagen and to win a formal
invitation to join the EU in May 2004. The summit is also expected to endorse
requests from Bulgaria and Romania to join in 2007.
But there is still much negotiating to be done. For one thing, member states
and applicants have not yet agreed how much money the new members will get
once they join. In the run-up to the summit, EU members have closed ranks
around a funding plan drawn up by Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency.
The plan, presented as a final offer, sets aside euro40.5 billion ($41 billion)
of funding for the ten new members between 2004 and 2006. That is euro2
billion short of the amount earmarked for enlargement in 1999, but at the time
it was assumed there would be six new members in the next wave, not ten.
EU leaders argue that they can no longer afford to be as generous as they
would like, because they are struggling with an economic slowdown and face
spending cuts to bring budget deficits back under control. We have been going
to the limit of our generosity, said Denmarks foreign minister, Per Stig
Moeller. Other countries have also suggested there is no more room for
negotiation. Jack Straw, Britains foreign minister, said of the funding plan:
It is an absolute ceiling, and that is also accepted by Germany, who are the [EUs]
biggest paymaster.
Candidate countries are not amused. They accuse the EU of being mean at a
time of great historic importance. In a jointly written article published this
week, the prime ministers of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia
made a last-ditch plea for generosity. They have won support from the European
Commission in Brussels. Its president, Romano Prodi, has appealed to member
states to give the new members all the money initially budgeted for expansion
back in 1999. EU diplomats have accused Mr Prodi of undermining efforts to
persuade the candidates to accept a less generous offer.
Some of the ten first-wave applicants (among them Slovakia and Estonia)
have already provisionally concluded accession talks. Others are still
haggling. Poland is furthest from completion. As the biggestand arguably the
most economically troubledof the candidates, it has chosen to play tough. It
still has a long list of unmet demands: it has, for instance, been holding out
for bigger farm-production quotas and higher subsidies for farmers, who employ
around 20% of the population. Talks with the Poles are expected to go to the
wire, perhaps spilling over into the weekend. Denmarks prime minister, Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, has said that the EU would be prepared to walk away if Poland
refuses to compromise. Those countries left behind will not get another chance
to join the EU before 2007.
Talking Turkey
Like Poland, Turkey will be involved in some tough talking at the summit.
EU foreign ministers have agreed to offer the Muslim nation a conditional date
for entry talks of July 2005; the condition is that Turkey passes a
human-rights review in late 2004. Ankara has said this is unacceptable. The EU,
it claims, would be committing an injustice if it fails to start talks with
Turkey before the 2004 enlargement. But the Turks are likely to play along in
the end, so keen are they to win a place within the EU.
Turkeys bid to join faces opposition from some quarters, such as Valéry
Giscard dEstaing, chairman of the EUs constitutional convention. He and those
like him point to the countrys poor human-rights record and the fact that
Turkey wants credit now for reforms that are still on the drawing-board.
Turkeys new government has set out a schedule of legislation to ban the death
penalty, outlaw torture, extend freedom of expression and grant cultural
rights to the countrys Kurdish minority. But it may be some time before all of
these laws are enacted. One of the biggest cheerleaders for Turkish membership
of the EU is the United States, which sees the country as a crucial ally in
NATO and for operations across the Middle East. We join you side by side in
your desire to become a member of the European Union, President George Bush
told Tayyip Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party won a landslide
victory in Turkeys general election on November 3rd.
The EUs talks with Turkey will hinge on another set of negotiations, over
the future of Cyprus. The island, divided into Greek and Turkish parts since
the Turkish army launched an invasion in 1974, has long been the biggest thorn
in the side of Turkish relations with Greece, an EU member. This week, the
United Nations presented the two sides with its latest reunification plan. The
UNs chief negotiator on Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, is expected to chair
last-minute talks between the Greek Cypriot leader, Glafcos Clerides, and
Turkish Cypriot officials in Copenhagen. But given both sides intransigence in
the past, and the fact that Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, is
apparently too ill to attend the summit, a successful outcome is far from
assured. The EU has said it is prepared to admit the Greek part of the island
alone if necessary.
If all goes well in Copenhagen, it will go down in history as the place where
the EU set in stone its big bang enlargement, ending the cold war division of
Europe, and where Turkeys once-unimaginable road to membership started. But EU
summits are unpredictable, and there is no guarantee that everything will go
to plan.
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