   Presencia-Opinión / Europa
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| EU Enlargement: How far Extends Europe? Por Benjamín Kienzle (Canal Mundo, 30/09/2003) |
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The Latvians were the last to approve their country’s entry into the EU by a plebiscite. Before, the peoples of Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary as well as the parliament of the Greek part of Cyprus had already said ‘yes’. This means that all these countries will join officially the EU in May 2002 during an Intergovernmental Conference, thus, increasing EU membership from 15 to 25 countries. Although it is not the first enlargement wave, it is the largest and most challenging enlargement in the history of the EU, raising important questions about its future. Usually, these questions deal with internal problems such as decision-making powers or the distribution of subsidies. However, it is often forgotten that enlargement has not ended yet and that countries like Romania, Turkey or even Morocco would like to join the EU. Therefore, the EU has to deal also with external questions. One of the most fundamental external questions is, which other countries shall enter the European Union. In other words: How far extends Europe? So far, three different lines of argumentation have been applied: a geographical, a historic-cultural and a civic-constitutional one. The geographical argumentation is based on the idea of “natural” borders of Europe such as the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea, which exclude all the countries beyond these borders from the EU. However, such borders are highly controversial, particularly in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the majority brings about practical problems. For example, the Ural and the Bosporus, possible European borders in the East (see “the Europe from the Atlantic to the Ural” by De Gaulle), would divide two countries: Russia and Turkey. Due to these problems, some conservative theorists and politicians, for example Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Kohl, use historic-cultural arguments to define the Europe’s borders. The most frequent argument is that Europe is principally characterised by its common Christian heritage, consequently excluding Muslim countries such as Turkey. However, the idea of a Christian Europe is far from the historical and current reality: Turkey and its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, have been an integral part of Europe for centuries. Algeria, officially a part of the French homeland until 1962, was a member of the ECC before Portugal or Spain, which itself was a Muslim country for eight centuries. Today, millions of Muslims live all over Europe and at least one Muslim country is regarded as clearly European: Bosnia. At the same time, many of the states in the EU are laicistic states, in which Christianity has lost its influence. In consequence, only one line of argumentation is left: the civic-constitutional one. According to this argumentation, Europe is an entity defined by the values it guarantees – the defence of human rights, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law. In principle, whatever country wants to join the EU and shares these values can do it. Nevertheless, enlargement has practical limits, namely the possibilities of the current members to meet the expectations, particularly the economic ones, of the new members. It is unlikely that all the new member states can gain the same benefits from the EU as those which have gained Ireland or Spain. Therefore, in practice, the polemic of William Wallace, in an article about this topic (International Affairs, 76, 3, 2000, pp475-493), is not without sense: “Institutionalized Europe extends, the disillusioned observer might … conclude, as far as west European taxpayers and voters are willing to tolerate”. |
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Benjamín Kienzle, estudiante en prácticas no IGADI. |
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ÚLTIMA REVISIÓN: 02/10/2003 |
