This column follows on from my column yesterday (issue 9947) and the day before (issue 9946) on the idea of a two-speed EU and the UK's position.
Iceland's motives. Iceland's application to join the EU has been welcomed with lashings of official enthusiasm but this enthusiasm has been largely in one direction, expressed by the EU institutions (the European Commission and the Presidency of the Council) with not much excitement from Iceland itself. The vote at the Icelandic parliament was not very clear, 33 to 28 with 2 abstentions. The political parties calling for membership of the EU include the Green/Left party which actually came out against accession but ended up saying membership of the EU would be a good thing because it would be possible to vote in a referendum at the end of the accession talks on the negotiated outcome, at which point it would be clear how many of the 330,000 Icelanders wanted to join the EU and how many opposed entry. On both sides, it is economic considerations that determine whether people want to join the EU or not. The “yes” vote is motivated by the monetary stability that the euro would bring in its wake. The “no” vote is motivated by lack of autonomy over fishing issues and whale-hunting. Iceland is already part of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the Schengen zone, of course, and already applies a lot of EU legislation, as the Icelandic foreign minister recently pointed out (see yesterday's newsletter).
The great pro-membership drive started in the spring of this year when the economic crisis sent unemployment spiralling from 2% to 9% of the working population and caused a collapse in the value of the Icelandic currency. This in turn led to a slump in buying power and a bailout of failed banks by the state. An opinion poll a short while after this showed that people in favour of joining the EU had risen to 40%, compared with 45% against EU membership and 15% undecided. This is hardly a mass movement and makes Barroso's talk about demonstration of confidence in the vitality of the EU project and Reinfeldt's “joy” look somewhat overstretched.
Iceland's motives are understandable and reasonable of course, but they are not connected with the idea of reconciliation between countries, the end of war, the weight of Europe in the world and the other aims the European dream is built upon. One may ask whether Iceland's situation couldn't simply be solved by bilateral arrangements that would not weigh down on the EU's institutions by adding one more commissioner, five (or six, I don't remember the details) extra MEPs and chairing the Council of Ministers for six months when it is their turn, etc.
New reflection about the institutions. The preceding paragraph does not apply only to Iceland. It applies across the board given the fragmentation of some candidate countries. To make this clear, take the example of Czechoslovakia, which was a single country when it entered EU accession talks. It then split into two separate countries. Serbia was a single country but is now three (Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia), all of which have applied to join the EU and all of which will be entitled when they join to their own EU commissioner, their own five or six MEPs, and their own six month stint of chairing the Presidency. In the future, one might see Cyprus divide into two, Scotland as a separate country (some people are already planning this), autonomy for Catalonia and the Basque Country, and perhaps Bosnia. With the current rules, the European Commission would turn into a veritable assembly, the Council would become a duplicate of the Council of Europe, and the European Parliament an uncontrollable triffid-like monster (unless the process of reducing the number of big country MEPs continues). The EU would run the risk of becoming as ineffective and weakly spread as Mercosur and other big groups of Central and Latin American countries, to the delight of William Hague and others in the United Kingdom and elsewhere who dream of a watered-down Europe. Guy Verhofstadt's idea about setting up a political hard core surrounded by an Organisation of European States (see my column in issue 9946) would become inevitable.
We should therefore start preparing for a re-think of the EU institutions.
Bosnia Herzegovina keeps demagogy alive and kicking. Several parliamentarians and others have totally slammed the European Commission's idea of removing the visa requirement for people carrying the passport of Serbia, Macedonia or Montenegro who want to enter the Schengen Area (see issue 9943). I should first explain that this idea has often been described as meaning that the three countries would become members of the Schengen Area but that is totally false. The essential characteristic of the Schengen Area is the scrapping of passport controls upon entry to the area and people from the three countries will still have to have valid passports to enter the Schengen Area. The only difference is that they wouldn't need a visa.
The protests against this European Commission initiative were motivated by the fact that Bosnia Herzegovina is not included (and neither is Albania for that matter) in the planned scrapping of the visa requirement because they do not yet meet the necessary criteria. There has been a flood of hysterical demagogy on this issue, with the leitmotif of discrimination against Muslims.
The vice-president of the European Commission, Jacques Barrot, has tried in vain to explain that removing the visa requirement requires certain preconditions to be met - starting with clearly valid passports at border points. Allowing people to end the free circulation area without proper controls would put an end to the Schengen Area. The Commission only had two options: either refusing to scrap the visa requirement for any country, even EU candidate countries which have made great efforts; or scrapping the visa requirement for countries that meet the fundamental security requirements. It chose the second option but the Commission has left the door open to the Bosnian government if it meets the requirements, and will help them comply. The President of the EU Council, Carl Bildt, then explained that Bosnians are not being discriminated against by the EU institutions. Instead, they are suffering because of the political incompetence of the leaders of Bosnia to overcome their differences and work together despite all the aid provided to them in this connection by the EU. Olli Rehn, EU Enlargement Commissioner, stressed the importance of scrapping the visa requirement to help different groups make contact with one another, to help young people study abroad and to help cement family ties, but one had to earn this right by meeting the necessary conditions. Barrot explained that the three countries for which the visa requirement may be scrapped still have to meet certain conditions in terms of tackling corruption and organised crime. The decision on whether the visa requirement will be scrapped on 1 January 2010 (if the European Parliament and Council of Ministers agree to it) will depend on a further examination of the specifics.
A whole raft of MEPs have fallen into the demagogic trap. Daniel Cohn-Bendit has accused the European Commission of “adding insult to injury for the people who suffered the most from the war”. As if the situation of the Muslims in Bosnia in the past was in any way connected with the country's inability to introduce biometric passports, properly monitor its borders and seriously tackle corruption and organised crime! It is in fact the European Commission's visa scrapping initiative that might actually give the Bosnian government the kick it requires to get it to move beyond rankling and disagreements from the past by acting in the spirit that made the start of European unity possible at the end of the Second World War.
There will not be a place in the EU for anyone who refuses to understand that the starting point of the EU project was reconciliation among warring brothers. Not to mention the fact that in order to have a role in the EU institutions and decision-making, countries have to be viable.
British politicians in favour of the euro. Proud to be British, Liberal and in favour of the UK joining the euro and EU supervision of banking - this made it possible for a conflict-free handing over of responsibilities at the European Parliament's economic and monetary committee, which is an unusual committee given its subject matter and its permanent dialogue with the European Central Bank (ECB), that is accepted and respected by the ECB President, Jean-Claude Trichet. Pervenche Berès chaired this committee for years with skill and authority, but the weakening of the Socialists in the recent European elections meant that the committee had to be chaired by someone from a different political party.
The EU's liberal and democrat group (ALDE) inherited chairmanship of the committee and appointed Sharon Bowles, an MEP from the UK, where most people oppose the euro and do not want EU control over the financial world. One could be understandably perplexed at this situation. Before her appointment by the committee itself, the only body with the power to agree to or refuse the orientation of the political groups, Sharon Bowles explained her own approach and that of her party - both want the UK to join the euro, both want the EU to regulate the world of finance, and both want the EU to supervise the banks. Sharon Bowles is happy to get economic and monetary affairs committee vice-chairs and coordinators involved in preparing for and holding dialogue with the ECB.
Although her appointment may initially have raised certain eyebrows, Sharon Bowles at the helm of the committee may help bring the UK closer to the eurozone and show that it is not true that everyone in the UK is against a strengthening of EU integration. Andrew Duff is certainly not a lone voice in the wilderness.
(F.R./transl.fl)