By Sir Timothy Garden
When European leaders talk about enlargement, they need currently to explain whether they are talking about their proposals for the EU or NATO. Both organisations have an exciting vision of a future in which they encompass the whole of the continent. The rationale for both sets of enlargement have some common features, but they also have some interesting differences.
It is sometimes forgotten that both the EU and NATO have already enlarged. The EU has grown from the six founding members in 1951 of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the 15 member states of today. Denmark, Ireland and the UK came in during 1973. Greece joined in 1981, Portugal and Spain in 1986, and Austria, Finland and Sweden joined just six years ago. NATO, as a military alliance was restricted both geographically and in terms of allegiance during the Cold War. However, it too has added three members to its number in the last ten years. The accession of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999 brought NATO up to a total of 19 members. Many European states now belong to both organisations: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK are full participating members of both. France remains outside of the integrated military structure of NATO, and Denmark has opted out of the EU defence developments. That leaves four traditional neutrals (Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden) in the EU but not NATO; and 8 countries in NATO but not in the EU (Canada, USA, Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Turkey).
The Central and Eastern European countries want greater security from membership of NATO, and greater economic development from membership of the EU. From the perspective of current members of both organisations there are a number of pluses and minuses. A bigger EU means a bigger market and in theory greater wealth. However for those nations which currently benefit from EU financial help, they worry that they will become net contributors as their poorer cousins to the East come in. They also worry about the need to reform the common agriculture policy, the risk of large scale labour movement, and the difficulties of decision making. The Nice Summit last year was supposed to put a rocket under the continual delays in the EU enlargement process. Another 12 prospective members (Cyprus, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Malta, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Turkey ) were given new hope that their membership would be seriously advanced.
The Irish held a referendum on the Nice Treaty as their constitution requires. With a rejection of the treaty (by 54% of the third of Irish citizens who bothered to vote), the question is now what effect this will have on the EU enlargement process. The answer is almost certainly that it will have no effect on enlargement, which is still moving fairly slowly. A suitable fix will be found before 2004 when it might become urgent. The list of applicants will take many years to work through, and Turkey will probably still be making its case in 2020.
The EU process is slowed down not just by politics but also by the reality of whether the applicant country meets a vast range of economic and other criteria. Oddly, the NATO process is assumed to be almost entirely about politics rather than objective military criteria. In 1999, the three lucky new members were taken in because the USA wanted them. Slovenia had too few friends pushing their case. Romania had a passionate advocate in France, but could not carry the rest of the members against the wish of the US. The next formal consideration of possible new members will take place at the NATO summit in Prague towards the end of next year. However, the political jostling has already started.
There has been some uncertainty as to what the US position would be. Would a slowing of NATO enlargement be a good trade for Russian acceptance of changes to the ABM treaty? We now know from President Bush’s statement on his Polish visit that he supports a comprehensive expansion of NATO. While Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania will probably cause no problems to the rest of Europe, the position of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia may be more contentious. The last three Baltic republics are an area of great sensitivity for Russia. NATO remains in the Russian public mind as a relic from Cold War confrontation, and an enlargement into the Baltic republics will be difficult to accept. Beyond the reaction of Russia, there are concerns about the progressive weakening of NATO as a military organisation, and also a worry about achieving consensus among so many nations.
The one area that needs both economic and political development is the Balkans. At some stage both the EU and NATO are going to have address how to handle enlargement in this direction.
In the same week, we have had both EU and NATO enlargements become difficult issues for European leaders. There are already enough differences between US and European perspectives to keep them busy, and they would probably have preferred to focus on handling EU enlargement rather than start the debate on where NATO is going.