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BALANCING ACT: Günter Verheugen, E.U. Commissioner for enlargement, on a recent visit to Poland and the Polish-Belorussian border
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Back in 1993, it was a relatively painless matter for the European Union to show its magnanimity and declare that it would answer communism's fall in Eastern and Central Europe with an equally historic enlargement of the E.U. Seven years later, magnanimity has nothing to do with it. The expansion of the E.U. to include as many as 13 new countries and 170 million more people, most of them considerably poorer than citizens of current member states, is a promise whose time has come. As this promise fitfully nears reality, the air is thick with recrimination, frustration and more than a little fear.
At the middle of it all, trying to maintain his trademark calm, is Günter Verheugen, the E.U.'s Commissioner for enlargement. His long political career spans a stint as general secretary of the German Free Democratic Party followed by a 1982 switch in party membership to a position as one of the Social Democrats' most valued voices on foreign policy and European affairs.
Verheugen, 56, is the first dedicated European Commissioner for enlargement, an emblem of the importance Commissioner Romano Prodi accords the brief most likely to define the legacy of his five-year term. Verheugen's job requires feats not just of politics but of political engineering, balancing speed against quality: membership can't happen quickly enough for the candidate countries, but many current members are concerned that the E.U. as a whole not be endangered by incongruities in the economies of the aspirant states. The response to Verheugen's latest formal report on the status of negotiations, released in early November, showed that squaring those two demands will be the political equivalent of juggling while on a tightrope.
The generally positive report chronicled the remarkable progress of most candidates in meeting the "Copenhagen criteria" for membership: stable institutions that guarantee democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the respect for and protection of minorities, as well as a functioning market economy that can withstand the competitive pressures within the Union. On the economic points, the Commission's report boldly ranked the candidates, placing tiny Cyprus and Malta — whose combined population comes to only 1.1 million — at the top of the list. They were followed by Estonia, Hungary and Poland in the next group, then the Czech Republic and Slovenia in a third category. Further down came Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia, followed by Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
This ranking set off a barrage of recriminations. It was perceived as a slight by the Czech Republic and Slovenia, which consider themselves contenders for the first group, and by Slovakia, which resented being placed with the two Baltic states that are not considered likely to make the first tranche. But at least none of the candidates could argue that the Commission doesn't take the process seriously anymore. Peter Ludlow, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, commented that the Prodi Commission and Verheugen have shown a commitment to making enlargement happen that is "light-years" beyond what has come before.
Timing, though, remains a touchy issue. The candidates have been clamoring for a date by which they will definitely become members; the E.U. is not willing or, it claims, even able to provide one. "The E.U. thinks the lack of a date will spur us on to make the necessary reforms, but the opposite is the case," says Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, Poland's secretary of state for European Integration. "We need to anchor our program to get our laws and budgets in line to a concrete calendar." Verheugen counters that approval comes once negotiations are complete, thus making a concrete date impossible. "We can't do more than we've done already," he said during a recent trip to Poland. "We've said the E.U. will be ready to accept members by the end of 2002, and I think we'll close negotiations with the most advanced countries in the course of 2002."
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