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Door swings shut behind new boys as EU's welcome is exhausted

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  • Door swings shut behind new boys as EU's welcome is exhausted

    Financial Times (London, England)
    September 27, 2006 Wednesday
    London Edition 1

    Door swings shut behind new boys as EU's welcome is exhausted 'Old
    Europe' will need to recover from enlargement fatigue before more
    countries join the club of 27, writes George Parker

    By GEORGE PARKER


    Bulgaria and Romania may be coming in to the European Union but the
    door is starting to swing shut behind them.

    The accession of the two Black Sea states completes the "big bang"
    expansion of the EU, which began in 2004 with eight former communist
    countries in central and eastern Europe.

    The healing of Europe's cold war divisions was a relatively easy
    political message for western leaders to sell but each new round of
    enlargement takes the EU into ever more difficultterrain.

    "You could sell the Czech Republic, Hungary or Poland joining," says
    a senior EU official involved in the enlargement process. "People
    knew about the Prague Spring or Budapest 1956 or Solidarity.

    "With Bulgaria and Romania it is more difficult to make the case on
    an emotional level, and it's going to keep getting harder."

    According to a Euro-barometer opinion poll this year, some 53 per
    cent of EU citizens viewed enlargement with "indifference, fear,
    annoyance or frustration", even if a narrow majority - 55 per cent -
    still felt positive about the process.

    The symptoms of enlargement fatigue became glaringly obvious last
    year when French and Dutch voters rejected the EU constitution, with
    No voters citing the club's eastward expansion as a prime reason for
    their dissatisfaction.

    For France, the expansion diluted the original essence of a western
    club of relatively wealthy countries largely operating under the
    political direction of Paris. Other founder members fear that the EU
    has grown too big, too fast.

    For the Dutch, migration was a big factor, as it now is in Britain
    (which was traditionally one of the biggest supporters of
    enlargement). The arrival of up to 600,000 east European workers in
    the UK between May 2004 and June this year outweighed anything the
    British government or European Commission had predicted.

    Although new EU members in central and eastern Europe have taken
    enormous strides since the fall of communism, recent political
    developments have reinforced the fears of sceptics in "old Europe".

    Poland's ruling party has been accused of populist nationalism,
    Slovakia's new coalition has been criticised for fanning xenophobia
    and Hungary's prime minister provoked demonstrations when he admitted
    he had lied to win a general election.

    Bulgaria and Romania's failure to tackle organised crime and
    corruption fully or to prepare their admin-istrative systems to
    handle billions of euros of EU aid has done little to build
    confidence.

    Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, insists
    enlargement benefits both old and new member states. "An enlarged
    Europe counts for more when we speak with China or Russia than
    before," he said.

    But he concedes Europe needs a pause before adding to a club of 27,
    whose population will approach 490m people. In particular, he says it
    would be "unwise" to expand the Union further before it upgraded its
    creaking institutions, through the ratification of parts of the EU
    constitution.

    The accession of Bulgaria and Romania is a natural break point. Only
    Croatia and Turkey have already started membership talks: the former
    is unlikely to be ready to join before 2011 at the earliest, the
    latter's progress towards the EU will be tortuous and may not achieve
    its goal.

    >From now on, the going gets tough. Bulgaria and Romania may have been
    poor (both had GDPs of 31 per cent the EU average in 2004) but other
    potential newcomers in the western Balkans - Serbia, Montenegro,
    Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia - will be even
    harder and more costly to absorb. And, like Turkey, they carry heavy
    political baggage. While all of those countries have at least had
    their "membership perspective" recognised by the EU, others on the
    fringes face a long spell in the cold. Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and
    Armenia may have to wait many years before the symptoms of
    "enlargement fatigue" in the EU start to subside.
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