The European Mosaic

David Gowland, Richard Dunphy, Charlotte Lythe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780582473706
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317873259
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The European Mosaic is an up-to-date introduction to all aspects of the politics, economics, culture and recent history of the European Union in particular and Europe in general. The European Mosaic effectively familiarizes students with EU issues that are currently in the news and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. It is a clear and accessible introduction to the European polity. Its strongly interdisciplinary focus provides a multidimensional understanding of contemporary Europe, of the process of European integration, and of the dynamics of the European Union. Suitable for undergrduate courses in European politics.

Part 1

Europe and the wider world

Plate 1.1 Chelsea Football Club players celebrating winning the English Premiership title on 30 April 2005. The team is owned by a Russian oil tycoon and managed by a Portuguese, and the native countries of the playing squad for this match were Cameroon, The Czech Republic (2), England (3), France (2), Germany, Iceland, Italy, Ivory Coast, Portugal (2), Russia, and Serbia and Montenegro, In what senses is this an English football club? In what senses is it European? Is it global?

Source: © EMPICS; picture by Mike Egerton

Section 1.1

Introduction

The enlargement of the European Union and the questions it poses

During a period of turbulent transatlantic relations in the 1970s, Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, commented ‘if I want to talk to Europe, who do I phone?’ At about the same time, the heads of government of the member states of the European Community (EC), the forerunner of the European Union (EU), issued a Declaration on European Identity (December 1973), which emphasised the EC’s unity and dynamism and its responsibility towards the rest of the world. Kissinger’s question and the issues raised by the declaration have enduring significance. They focus attention on the meaning of Europe, on the relationship between Europe and the EU, and on the role, functions and identity of the EU. Europe is a problematical, highly contested concept that attracts a wide variety of definitions, images, representations and explanations. There are, in effect, many Europes, extending, for example, from the ‘Europe’ of the EU to the ‘Europe’ of the Eurovision song contest or European Champions League football, which stretches as far afield as the Ukraine and Israel.

Part 1 of this book introduces some of the major debates about Europe and lays the foundations for later detailed treatment of the constituent elements of the EU. Some of the questions addressed here are general, overlapping and pan-European in their coverage of changing and contested concepts of Europe:

• What is Europe?

• Where does Europe begin and end?

• Who is European?

• What, if anything, is distinctive about Europe?

Other questions in this section concern specific aspects, regions and countries of contemporary Europe. They link the general questions to a particular dimension or set of circumstances:

• Is there a cultural Europe?

• Is there a European economy?

• Is there a social Europe?

• Is there a political Europe?

• Are Turkey and Russia European?

• How different are Eastern and Western Europe?

• What is the relationship between the EU and the wider world?

This introductory section considers some of the questions posed by the enlargement of the EU for member states, for non-member states and for international organisations. We start with enlargement, partly because it touches on some of the problems and themes surrounding the idea of Europe and partly because it is one of the major, recurring features of the EU’s evolution and also highlights some of the current challenges and difficulties facing this organisation.

During the past 30 years, the EU has grown in size from six member states and a population of 185 million to 25 member states and a population of 459 million. The most recent and ambitious enlargement in the EU’s history (May 2004) added ten states and a population of 75 million (see Key fact 1.1). This expansion has reflected the impact of several developments, most notably:

• The gradual but not complete end of the division of Western Europe into two trading blocs. This division originated in the 1950s. On one side was the EC, comprising Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany), France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. On the other was the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), originally comprising Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the UK but now consisting of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

• The reintegration of Greece, Spain and Portugal into Western Europe following the downfall of military dictatorships in these states.

• The collapse of the communist states in Eastern Europe and the end of the division of Europe and of Germany in 1989/90.

Key fact 1.1

The enlargement of the EU

1951	The original ‘six’ – Belgium, France, the FRG, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands.
1973	Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom.
1981	Greece.
1986	Portugal, Spain.
1990	East Germany as part of a united Germany.
1995	Austria, Finland, Sweden.
2004	Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia.

According to current plans for future enlargement, Bulgaria and Romania are set to join the EU in 2007; Croatia and Turkey were accepted as candidates for EU membership in June and December 2004, respectively. In addition, the EU and the western Balkan countries have together created a ‘Stabilisation and Association process’, which, in addition to Croatia and the FYR of Macedonia, extends to Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro. The long-term goal is EU membership. In the meantime, these countries have free access to the EU market and an opportunity to negotiate ‘Stabilisation and Association agreements’ with the EU, as Croatia and the FYR of Macedonia have already done, before eventually applying for EU membership. In the more distant future, EU membership is a possibility for the Ukraine but remains unlikely for Belarus and almost out of the question for Russia by virtue of its size and standing as a world power. Other possible candidates for EU membership include the four EFTA countries. Norway has, by referendum, rejected membership on two occasions, while Switzerland applied for membership in 1992 but did not pursue the matter.

Figure 1.1 Maps showing enlargement of the European Union

Source: Europa (2005).

The EU’s future expansion plans, especially the decision to open EU membership talks with Turkey, raise the question as to whether it is ever possible to draw the final boundaries of the EU, and that, in turn, poses questions about the meaning of Europe, the purpose of European integration and the nature of EU interests in the wider world. The EU has never defined the limits of its possible territorial coverage and has formally advocated an inclusive rather than exclusive approach to the question of enlargement. It invites any European state to join the organisation, without specifying what is to be understood as European (see Key fact 1.2). In territorial terms, the shape of the EU is ultimately determined by the governments of the member states. The open-endedness of the enterprise means that it is unclear whether any state can apply for membership provided that it meets the declared criteria (see Key fact 1.3) and whether, for example, the admission of Turkey makes it all the more difficult to refuse membership to Russia or the Ukraine.

Such questions are not new. They have to a greater or lesser extent accompanied each phase of enlargement in the history of the EU from the first failed attempts at expansion in the 1960s, when President de Gaulle of France questioned the UK’s European credentials and vetoed the UK’s application for membership of the EC in 1963 and again in 1967. At the same time, de Gaulle expressed a view that has accompanied each proposed enlargement, namely that enlargement would adversely affect the economic arrangements, the geographical focus and the workings of the organisation (see Opinion 1.1). De Gaulle’s brutal use of the national veto and of the power to label an applicant state European or non-European was an early demonstration of a continuing contrast between the rhetoric of European unity and inclusiveness and the politics of division and exclusion, which are based on the drawing of arbitrary lines between insiders and outsiders (Heffernan 1998). Studies of the background to the recent enlargement of the EU (Kok 2003; Nugent 2004; Cameron 2004) have raised several questions about this development, most notably about whether it will strengthen or weaken the EU, about the impact of expansion on the new and old member states, and about the particular implications of enlargement for EU policies and policymaking. Each phase of the EU’s expansion has challenged the EU’s capacity to absorb new members while maintaining the momentum of European integration. One view is that the processes of enlargement and deepening are complementary. Another view, evident in de Gaulle’s handling of the first UK application for EC membership, is that enlargement leads to a wider but weaker EU. Over the years, the main thrust of this argument has more or less been to the effect that an expanding EU is more susceptible to disintegrative forces and can be held together only on the basis of a multi-speed approach to policy integration whereby a hard core of member states acts as the spearhead of integration, leaving other states to catch up later. It can be argued that a multispeed Europe already exists in several main policy areas, such as the single currency, Schengen and defence (all of which will be discussed later). A multi-speed Europe is not necessarily a problem from an integrationist perspective (Cameron 2004). Furthermore, there is strong evidence to suggest that the relationship between enlargement and integration has varied over time and in different cases. In the 1970s, the implications of the first enlargement generally overshadowed the process of integration. In the 1980s, however, the EU expanded at the same time as it embarked upon the single market programme, and in the 1990s the decision to form the euro zone preceded the enlargement of 1995. However, the most recent enlargement of the EU has occasioned further expressions of the view that ‘more [Europe] means less [integration]’. According to this view, therefore, the larger the EU becomes the more likely it will come to resemble a cumbersome international organisation supervising little more than a free trade area.

Key fact 1.2

How to join the EU

Any European State may apply to become a Member of the Union. It shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the assent of the European Parliament, which shall act by an absolute majority of its component members. The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded which such admission entails shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.

(Source: Article O of the Treaty on EU.)

Opinion 1.1

The first failed attempt at enlargement

Extracts from a press conference (14 January 1963) at which President de Gaulle of France questioned the UK’s European credentials and justified his decision to veto the first UK application to join the EC:

England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slightly agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions. In short, the nature, the structure, the very situation (conjuncture) that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the continentals. …

It must be agreed that first the entry of Britain, and then these States [Denmark, Ireland, Norway], will completely change the whole of the actions, the agreements, the compensations, the rules which have already been established between the Six, because all these States, like Britain, have very important peculiarities. Then it will be another Common Market [European Community] whose constructions ought to be envisaged; but one which would be taken to 11 and then 13 and then perhaps 18 would no longer resemble, without any doubt, the one which the Six built.

(Source: WEU Assembly 1963 (1964): 20–2.)

Was de Gaulle right?

A further aspect of the wider but weaker view of enlargement concerns institutional integration and the effectiveness of the EU’s institutions and decision-making system. Whether enlargement has an invigorating or paralysing effect in this and in other respects is a matter of speculation. To date, the rate of expansion of the EU has formed a marked contrast to the laggardly efforts of the governments of the member states to undertake fundamental reforms of the EU organisation. Some of the EU institutions have long pressed the case for reorganisation in the belief that the combination of a largely unreformed system and an increased membership could jeopardise the process of integration (see Opinion 1.2). The impact of institutional changes in recent years is considered in Part 3. At the very least, there is a major question mark against whether the new constitution of the EU (if ratified) will deliver a system capable of managing a membership of 30 plus states in the near future. There is in this respect much substance to the view that while the EU strongly encouraged the new member states to prepare for membership, its own preparations for enlargement were very limited and did little more than meet the minimum requirements for an enlarged EU to function (Cameron 2004).

Opinion 1.2

The process of enlargement

Prior to the enlargement of the European Community to include Greece (1981) and Portugal and Spain (1986), an EC Commission paper commented on the implications of enlargement:

The institutions and organs of the present Community cannot ensure that the process of integration will continue in an enlarged Community; on the contrary there is reason to fear that the Community decision making procedures will deteriorate. If this happen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• List of figures and plates
• List of tables
• List of text boxes
• Part 1 Europe and the wider world
• Part 2 Country studies
• Part 3 The European Union
• Part 4 Society, culture and politics in contemporary Europe
• Part 5 Main issues and challenges
• Chronological table
• Bibliography
• Index