Olli Rehn Fights EU Enlargement Fatigue
By Alison Smale and Dan Bilefsky
Focus News, Bulgaria
June 22 2006
22 June 2006 | 20:07 | International Herald Tribune
Olli Rehn, the European Union’s expansion commissioner, issued a
strong call Monday to European leaders to sell enlargement to voters
and not make it a scapegoat of larger policy failures such as high
unemployment and globalization.
"Enlargement blues could be called ‘unemployment blues’ or
‘globalization blues’," Rehn, a Finn, said in an interview at his
office. "The origins are much deeper in our social fabric."
Rehn, who has been responsible for enlargement for almost two years,
acknowledged that the policy was a tough sell. On vacation last summer
in France and Germany, he said, he heard popular criticism. "I am not
blind or deaf," he said. "I could see there is a certain enlargement
fatigue."
But, he argued, Europeans are often "more rational" than their
governments and can be sold on the notion that the absorption of eight
former communist countries and Cyprus and Malta – all of which became
members in May 2004 – has been a success story, uniting a Continent
previously divided by the Cold War.
"We should not make enlargement a scapegoat for our domestic policy
failures," he said, adding, "The European Union has been better at
doing enlargement than communicating enlargement."
For instance, the EU summit meeting last week ended with a statement
trumpeting the success of the May 2004 expansion. "That’s the kind
of thing I want to hear," Rehn said.
Asked whether European politicians were doing enough of that kind
of talk once they left the summit halls of Brussels, Rehn mentioned
President Jacques Chirac of France as an example of someone who had,
in his view, done that, but declined – in the characteristic manner
of EU officials who must please 25 constituencies – to single out
countries that were not playing their part. When reminded that Chirac
must leave office within a year, he smiled and acknowledged that Chirac
would not be a candidate in next year’s race for the French presidency.
Enlargement "has been a success story," Rehn said. "The EU should
have all the reasons to be proud of it." Asked, therefore, why this
pride was not more palpable, he said it was linked to "bad feelings
and social discontent in many EU states."
He also noted that the expansion in May 2004 was essentially
"yesterday’s news" when it happened because the EU and the new member
states had been so careful to negotiate economic, social, political
and other reforms in advance of membership.
That pattern, he noted, is continuing in the efforts to include new
members from the Balkans and in the case of Turkey.
The summit meeting was also dominated by talk of the 25-nation bloc
having reached its capacity to absorb new members. Rehn stressed,
however, that this was not so much a sign that Europe should not
expand but proof that it could not function smoothly without altering
institutions and operations to reflect that it was no longer a cozy
bloc of a dozen or 15 overwhelmingly West European states.
Romania and Bulgaria are the two nations due to join next, with a
review process this fall to determine whether or not the EU will
stick to the current date of Jan. 1 next year for their admission.
Turkey, which is not expected to complete membership negotiations
for another 10 to 15 years, poses much bigger questions.
Rehn said Turkey had made significant progress in reducing systematic
torture but that the pace of judicial reform guaranteeing freedom of
expression was "more schizophrenic."
The prosecution of the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk last spring for
remarks acknowledging Turkey’s role in the genocide against Armenians
in the early 20th century was "a disappointment in the beginning,"
said Rehn, who met Pamuk on his last visit to Turkey. Eventually,
however, the case was dropped – resolved in a way, he said, that
should serve as a benchmark for other cases concerning free speech.
He added that skepticism toward Turkey appeared to be softening
in the most unlikely of places, noting that France and Germany –
two countries where politicians and voters are highly critical of
Turkey’s projected EU membership – each awarded the maximum, 12 points,
to Turkey’s act in the recent Eurovision song contest.
Both Romania and Bulgaria have made progress in the key area of
judicial reform, Rehn said, but the EU needs to be sure that the
changes are genuine and likely to last.
Romania has made large strides in the past 18 months, he said, and
Bulgaria has started to do the same, but must stay the course.
Bulgarian legislators had to forgo some vacation last summer to put
necessary changes in place, he noted, and this summer it should be
the prosecutors and judges who stay at work to make convincing changes.
"We can’t say yet that it’s on the right track," he said. When asked
to specify which changes would convince Brussels, he stressed: "We
can’t start a witch hunt and ask for a certain number of people to
be arrested because that would be against European standards. But we
need to be assured that countries, when they join, have functional
judicial systems."
As for other Balkan countries – Albania and former Yugoslav republics
that are now independent – Rehn underlined the importance of sticking
to standards set by agreements such as the Dayton accords that
brought peace to Bosnia after the conflict of the 1990s or the likely
international accord now being negotiated on the status of Kosovo,
the Serbian province that has been under UN administration since 1999.
Asked how Balkan leaders could be expected to stick to such criteria
when the EU itself waives its own rules on such matters as national
budget deficits, Rehn said simply, "Of course, applying double
standards is incorrect and counterproductive." The difference, he
added, is one of degrees.