Prospects and Risks

Beyond EU Enlargement

2002/2003

STRATEGY PAPER

Vol. 1
Eastern Europe:
Challenges of a Pan-European Policy
Iris Kempe ed.

Vol. 2
Southeastern Europe:
Weak States and Strong International Support
Wim van Meurs ed.

Preface

Since the signing of the Treaties of Rome in 1957, Western European history has been an ongoing process integrating and enlarging European institutions. Over the course of that time, the institutions now known as the European Union have become a major pillar for the security and stability for Europe as a whole. These essential functions can only be perpetuated if the Union can project its capacities and capabilities beyond its current borders. Today’s European agenda is defined by integration. Offering prospects for membership in the EU has been a successful instrument for helping shape the transition in East Central Europe. The imminent first round of enlargement also calls for a deepening of EU integration, which should be resolved through the EU Convention and the next Intergovernmental Conference. While the European Union is preparing for ten new member states, developments in the wider Europe are far from standing still. The countries beyond the EU’s future borders in Eastern Europe and the Balkans are undertaking a threefold process of national consolidation, transition to a market economy and strengthening parliamentary democracy. These processes entail risks that range from authoritarian regimes to armed escalation. These risks have a direct impact on European security and stability. At the same time, some areas of internal transition are making serious strides toward Western standards. For this reason, simply reducing Eastern and Southeastern Europe to a set of risks threatens to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. One must always also consider the European self-definition of the countries concerned. In Southeastern Europe, this definition, in combination with EU policy, is the driving force for internal development. Among the successor states of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine and Moldova are deciding in favor for EU membership, and the Union is not meeting their interest.

Developments in the EU’s direct neighborhood are dynamic. In the Balkans, change has been driven by conflicts that led to violence. Since the European summit in Helsinki (1999), it has been obvious that the Balkans are a key region of interest for the EU. The Union’s fundamental aim for Southeastern Europe is to create a situation in which military conflict is unthinkable - expanding to the region the area of peace, stability, prosperity and freedom established over the last 50 years by the EU and its member states. Pressed by violent events, the Union decided to apply its successful approach of opening accession options and offering intensive transition support. At first glance, Southeastern Europe appears a part of extensive EU strategies, but more detailed analysis shows that Balkan-EU relations are still an open question. Offering prospective membership to five additional countries ranging from Albania to Serbia is not an easy task. Legitimate doubts exist about whether the southeastern countries are able to fulfill EU requirements. Morever, integrating the Balkans also requires steps forward in European integration. Both aspects need new analytical solutions and political attention beyond current strategies.

The EU’s relations toward its future East European neighbors differ strategically from its relations to the southeastern ones. At present, the EU has identified the need for a new neighborhood policy that takes into account negative side effects enlargement will have for countries that are not currently viewed as accession candidates. Rhetorically, the Union is not interested in a new dividing line along its future eastern border. Precisely this approach is reflected in the main EU documents guiding the future neighborhood policy: the European Constitution and the “Wider Europe – Neighborhood” outline initiated by the European Commission in March 2003. The goal of avoiding a new dividing line shapes the EU’s external relations, the second pillar of EU integration. The third pillar of integration, justice and home affairs is, however, driven by the interest of keeping problems out and borders closed. A new neighborhood policy has to overcome the contradiction between these two interests. Furthermore, the situation within in the region differs widely between an authoritarian Belarus and a Ukraine whose foreign policy agenda is guided by interest in EU membership. A new neighborhood policy has to be based on a policy-oriented knowledge of the regional situation as well as on new possibilities for European integration.

Both neighborhood agendas, in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, are enormous challenges for the continent’s future. The Union has hard work ahead of it for many years to come. Because all too often knowledge about transformation, security and integration in these regions is obscure, even for specialists, these two volumes lay out the risks and challenges facing both regions and the enlarged European Union as a whole.

Risk Reporting 2002 is a joint policy advice project of the Bertelsmann Foundation in Gütersloh, and the Bertelsmann Group for Policy Research at the Center for Applied Policy Research (CAP) in Munich. In line with the general objective of addressing key issues and risks even before they become part of the European agenda, Risk Reporting for a future enlarged European Union’s eastern and southeastern neighborhood started in 1999 with the volume The EU Accession States and Their Eastern Neighbours. Unlike most studies at the time of the Helsinki European Council, this project focused not the accession states’ integration in Euro-Atlantic structures, but rather on enlargement’s projected consequences for relations with the eastern neighbors. The next study, Beyond EU Enlargement, published in 2001, again followed an unorthodox line of thinking by comparing the relevance and characteristics of specific risk areas related to EU enlargement (i.e. minority issues; visa, border and trade policies; cross-border cooperation; security policies) for the future eastern and southeastern neighbors of an enlarged EU. Differentiated, non-integrationist forms of cooperation are being designed and implemented with the CIS states, whereas the states of the Western Balkans have been offered differentiated, long-term trajectories towards integration in Euro-Atlantic structures. In sum, only a multi-layered Europe can come to terms with the conflicting time frames and strategic agendas without risking institutional overstretch or destabilizing disparities along the outer borders of an EU with 25 members.

Many thanks are due to the 25 authors from think tanks, academic institutions, NGOs and government institutions throughout Europe, who contributed greatly to the success of this endeavor. Over and above the requirements of a normal anthology, they met for symposia in Munich, Moscow, Sofia and Warsaw to discuss policy recommendations and to compare notes on national and regional peculiarities. Iris Kempe and Wim van Meurs created the initial strategic framework for the individual reports and have amalgamated arguments and recommendations in a thought-provoking paper on Prospects and Risks Beyond EU Enlargement.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Werner Weidenfeld
Director of the Center for Applied Policy Research
at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich
Member of the Executive Board of the Bertelsmann Foundation, Gütersloh

Download full Paper