WSJ(12/17) Column: Europe Builds Edifice, But Will It Stand?
16 Dec 20:38
By George Melloan
The European Union had a big day in Copenhagen last Saturday when leaders of
the 15 member states agreed to admit 10 new aspirants to membership. As with
most EU events, there was a great deal of last-minute haggling before the deal
was struck. Turkey, which has been stiff-armed for 40 years, was finally
promised a chance to begin negotiations in 2004, if all goes well.
Amid all the self-congratulation, a niggling little question keeps popping
up: Why does anyone want to join the EU? Its largest member, Germany, seems
mainly interested in pulling other members down to its sickly level by forcing
them to jack up taxes to the German level. The other prime mover in 1950 of
what later became the EU, France, still has dreams of turning it into a new
Napoleonic empire. The United Kingdom, frozen out by Charles de Gaulle for 10
years before joining in 1973, still isn't sure about whether it wants to trust
the folks who run the euro.
Some of the EU's creations have been disasters. Generous farm subsidies drain
the EU budget and earn Europe the enmity of poor agricultural nations that
can't afford to compete with subsidized farming. The insane fisheries policy
encourages over-fishing, depleting fish stocks offshore in the Atlantic. The
European Commission, the EU's executive branch, seems at a loss to explain what
purpose is served in blocking mergers of companies not headquartered in Europe.
The ambition for a common foreign policy that France has clung to from the
beginning, doesn't seem to be going anywhere very fast, mainly because members
are unwilling to switch from welfare programs to spending that maintains
military power.
And yet 10 European states were hammering on the door to get into this club
and there are more waiting in line. They all have their separate reasons.
Poland's ex-communist leaders, who are rapidly running the economy into the
ground, wanted to get their hands on some of those EU farm subsidies. Greek
Cypriots want to erase the wall that separates them from Turkish Cypriots,
using the leverage that EU membership can provide. The three Baltic states,
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, want some help in fending off the tender
embraces of the Russians who held them captive for 50 years.
And so it goes with the other candidates, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta. Romania and Bulgarian hope to be in the next
class to matriculate. And maybe after them would come the Balkan states.
In principle, most of these aspirants have sound reasons. The one thing
Europe's small countries have never had was security. Their leaders have
noticed that EU and NATO membership has calmed down the ancient animosities
that have soaked the European continent with blood for centuries. The Balkan
horrors of recent years, which degenerated into such barbarisms as ethnic
cleansing, was a reminder that Europe can still come up with deadly tyrannies
of the sort practiced by Slobodan Milosevic. It took major military muscle,
supplied by the U.S. and NATO, to subdue even a relatively small Serbia.
Winston Churchill was prophetic when just after World War II he proposed that
Europe knit itself together with friendly alliances. NATO, sponsored by the
U.S., became the answer to the Soviet threat. What later became the EU, which
had its beginnings with the European Coal and Steel Community, helped build a
European economy. It started with six countries, France, West Germany, Italy
and the Benelux nations, and has added members periodically ever since.
The secret of this success was free trade. Trade barriers came down and the
EU opened up to a free flow of goods, investment, services and people. Two of
the most dramatic events were the Schengen plan, which demolished border
checkpoints on the continent, and the single currency, which now makes trade
easier for 12 EU nations.
Peace, security and free trade are a winning combination. And despite the
various relapses into bureaucratic interventionism, that combination is the
reason states want to join. After the new entries become members of the EU on
May 1, 2004, it will constitute a common market of 450 million persons with a
$9 trillion economy, approaching the size of the U.S. economy, which exceeds
$10 trillion.
So the EU has not lost sight of its reason for being, despite the temptation
to merge all those diverse cultures into a "United States of Europe." But of
course it is still capable to fundamental errors. Its next big project is the
creation of a European constitution, presumably for the purpose of harmonizing
EU law. That may well be a bridge too far.
Valerie Giscard d'Estaing, a former French president who has been put in
charge of this project, is a somewhat dubious choice. His presidency turned out
to be a messy affair when he was forced to admit not long before his 1981
reelection bid that Central African Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa had proved to be
a very special friend, sending Giscard gifts of diamonds. Since Bokassa was a
particularly odious dictator, with a bad habit of bumping off his enemies, this
didn't go down well in France, even though the gifts were not illegal under
French law. Mr. Giscard d'Estaing lost to the Socialist Francois Mitterrand,
who held the presidency for two terms, despite some peccadilloes of his own.
Why Mr. Giscard d'Estaing was picked for something as important as writing a
new EU constitution probably has something to do with his patrician appearance
and the fact that he is French. But he committed another error of judgment last
week at a time when EU leaders were deciding to cut Turkey some slack, when he
said that admitting Turkey to the EU "would be the end of Europe." This affront
probably convinced the EU leaders that it was time to quit rejecting a
strategically placed NATO ally, hence the offer to Ankara to begin talks.
But what are the chances that all members will be willing to further
surrender their national sovereignty just so the French can pursue their goal
of "deepening" the EU or (more precisely) enlarging its power? Britain, for
one, might not find that an appetizing prospect. But so far the basic
achievements of the EU have held it together, and the enlargement suggests that
those are still a powerful draw.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
12-16-02 2038ET |
