EUROPEAN ELITES CAN’T IGNORE THE VIEWS OF THEIR PEOPLES
Jonathan Freedland

The Guardian, UK
Oct 5 2005

Opening the door to Turkey was right, but EU expansion is bound to
fail if the dreamers ignore the majority

One of the least noticed political deaths of recent times was the
demise of Britain in Europe. Launched with great hoopla in 1999, at
a glossy event attended by Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy and the Tory
titans Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine – a gesture for which Clarke
may yet pay a high price – the organisation was quietly put to sleep
in August. Cause of death: the no votes in France and the Netherlands,
which sealed the fate of the European constitution.

“Campaign operations have ceased because there is no campaign,”
says a spokesman, still manning the phones in what used to be HQ.

Britain in Europe’s founding purpose was UK entry into the euro. At
the time, our national politics seemed to revolve around the issue.

The Conservative party drove itself crazy over it, as rival factions
subjected every utterance to almost theological scrutiny. Differences
over the euro were held to be the defining gulf that separated Blair
from Gordon Brown. The most eminent political commentators in the
land swore that an eventual referendum on the single currency would
be the most significant decision today’s generation of Britons would
ever face.

That all seems a long time ago now. At last week’s Labour party
conference, neither Blair nor Brown so much as mentioned it. On Monday
in Blackpool, Clarke referred to the euro – but only to say it was
“paranoid” to imagine he would ever try to lead Britain into it.

It is the deadest of dead letters.

The constitution briefly served as a surrogate goal for British
euro enthusiasts, but the French and Dutch killed that off too. To
complete the process, economic lethargy on the continent has erased
the europhiles’ longest-serving argument – that basket-case Britain
needs to learn from its successful neighbours – so that now Blair
lectures the other Europeans on what they might learn from us. When
the prime minister did address the theme last week, it was only to
diss the EU’s big beasts. “Not for us the malaise of France or the
angst of Germany,” he said, with acid in his voice.

On Monday, there came a moment when this downward trend seemed poised
to reach its logical conclusion. If Austria’s objections had been
heeded, and the union’s 25 member states had blocked talks aimed at
Turkish entry, the sense of gloom would have been all-consuming. With
Germany paralysed and government-less and France gazing at its own
navel, the defeat of the EU’s latest grand design – eastward expansion
beyond Christendom – would have marked 2005 as the year the wheels
finally came off the great Euro-train. That outcome was avoided
and that is surely welcome. Advocates of Turkish entry were right
to argue that the admission into the EU of a large Muslim democracy
would represent the best possible proof that there need be no clash of
civilisations: no longer will the jihadists be able to speak of the
Christian west pitted against the Muslim rest. Instead the EU, that
quintessentially western club, will count as one of its biggest members
– with a projected population of 80 million in 2015, the earliest
possible year of entry – a nation now ruled by an Islamist government.

So opening the door to Turkey was the right move. And it is just an
opening. If Turkey does not improve its appalling record on human
rights, the door should stay closed. Optimists say the country
has already passed eight key packages of constitutional reforms,
abolished the death penalty and changed its stance on Kurdish rights –
recently establishing Kurdish-language TV services. Pessimists say the
mentally-ill continue to be punished rather than treated, that last
week Ankara moved to outlaw the country’s leading gay rights movement
and that dissent is still criminalised: witness the prosecution of the
novelist Orhan Pamuk for daring to challenge Turkey’s state denial of
its 20th-century crimes against the Armenians. As for the Kurds, say
the worriers, let’s see what happens if Iraq breaks up and the north
of the country becomes independent Kurdistan. Then we’ll discover
how relaxed Turkey really is.

The optimists reckon the carrot of EU membership will persuade Turkey
to keep on changing. For Mark Leonard of the Centre for European
Reform this is where the EU’s bureaucratic style comes into its own.

Submit Turkey to a decade of Brussels “nit-picking” and Ankara
will have to clean up its act – not just passing liberal laws but
implementing them. “It won’t be good enough to do it for 10 minutes,”
says Leonard. “It’s got to be for 10 years.”

This is what Europhiles mean when they speak of the “soft power” of
the union, the capacity to draw countries towards democracy through
the magnetic pull of EU-style prosperity and stability. How much
better, and more effective, than the “hard power” of George Bush:
democracy delivered by bombs from the sky and boots on the ground.

Yet Europhiles should not be too smug too soon. Monday’s decision
may have averted a train wreck, but the course ahead is hardly smooth.

For one thing, to admit Turkey is to repeat the very behaviour
that has created the union’s crisis of legitimacy. Once again, the
governments and elites have pressed ahead with a step that their
peoples loudly oppose. Europe-wide polling shows a clear majority
against Turkish membership, with unambiguous opposition in Germany,
France and the Netherlands, rising to 80% in Austria. One can shake
one’s head at the xenophobia or even Islamophobia that might lurk
behind those numbers, but it won’t do any good. If this year’s
referendum defeats said anything, it was that Europeans were fed
up with their views being pushed aside by a political class that,
time after time, insists it knows best. To press ahead blithely with
Turkish admission, waving aside the concerns of these majorities,
would be to have learned nothing.

Instead, those who believe Turkey belongs in the EU will have to
spend the next decade making a case for it. That means explaining
how a country where income per head is a tenth of the UK’s – and
which will instantly become the EU’s poorest member – can fit into
a club dominated by wealthy, industrialised nations. And how the
poorest workers in the union will be able to withstand competition
from migrants ready to work for even lower wages.

There are answers to these questions. The Turkish economy is growing,
so that the gap between it and the rest of the EU should be narrower
by the time entry comes around. And there could be a transition period,
delaying the day when Turkish workers are able to offer their services
anywhere in the union.

Whatever the specifics, answers there will have to be. Because the old
European way of doing business – act first, worry about legitimacy
afterwards – is surely over. The people won’t put up with it any
longer. France and Austria, for example, have reserved the right
to refuse any further EU expansion in a referendum. In other words,
Turkish membership could be vetoed on the whim of Lille and Linz.

The European dreamers still have grand plans – eyeing the Balkans,
Georgia and the Ukraine as potential recruits – as if they have
replaced one driving goal with another. The obsession used to be ever
deeper, federalist integration; now it is ever wider expansion. But
if they pursue the new ambition the way they chased the last one,
with scant regard for the people they claim to represent, it will
meet the same fate: failure.