Brussels must offer the Balkans a credible future
By Olli Rehn
As we approach the second anniversary of the European Union's enlargement to include 10 new member states, we should celebrate the Union's success in helping to transform central and eastern Europe into the most dynamic part of the continent.
The prospect of EU membership anchored the transition of these countries from communism after 1989, boosting the modernisers who opened up their economies to foreign investment and reformed the state. Enlargement is an extraordinary example of soft power – and it is one of our most powerful and successful policies.
The heart of the EU's enlargement policy is conditionality. The conditions for membership are clear and rigorous, and the Commission has well-established and respected methods for assessing compliance with them. These conditions require nothing less than a top-to-bottom reform of a would-be member's institutions and policies.
But our conditionality works only if it is credible. Countries have to be sure that they have a realistic chance of joining the EU – even if it is many years away – if reformist leaders are to convince their public that it is worth making enormous efforts to meet the EU's conditions. The countries cannot stay the course if the EU wavers on its commitments.
Last year, each of the Balkan countries took a step towards the EU. That does not mean that they are racing towards membership. For a number of these countries, many more years of work are required before they will be ready to join. Each will move towards the EU step by step, when it meets the conditions set for each stage, and on its own merits.
But each small step forward helps to confirm to the electorate that their country's reforms are worth it and that their leaders should continue to follow the European agenda. In the Balkans, this encouragement is critical, given the region's very recent experience of ethnic hatred and armed conflict. Our enlargement policy now has to prove its transformative power in a region where states are weak and societies divided.
This year, the region finally has a real chance to move beyond the legacy of war. By the end of 2006, the countries could put behind them the problem of co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, with all the persons indicted for war crimes in The Hague. Likewise, it is possible that the status questions of Kosovo, and of Serbia and Montenegro, will be resolved. The Balkans countries could be emerging from the long tunnel of nationalism into the light, rejoining the family of European nations where they belong.
But to achieve this, we must be ready to welcome this region and support its democratic forces. This year is the worst possible time for the EU to go wobbly on its commitment to future enlargement – as some politicians and commentators have recently suggested. The conditionality will not work if the commitment starts to fade.
How can we persuade leaders in the region to have the courage to deliver Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, and Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, to The Hague if we do not have the courage of our own convictions? How can we persuade Belgrade and Pristina to take the bold step of finding a viable solution for Kosovo if we cannot offer them a future place in the European family?
For that reason, we must keep faith with these countries. There is no reason to call into question their European vocation – it would damage them greatly without benefiting the Unionat all.
The EU has long debated how to reform its institutions and policies, and that debate goes on. We need to find a way out of the impasse on the draft constitution, for the sake of our own citizens, and to improve the competitiveness of the European economy. But none of these problems would be resolved by stopping enlargement.
In fact, the history of European integration shows that deepening has always proceeded in parallel with widening. So it can again. And we cannot wait for the next big enlargement to sort out the EU's internal problems, because the next accessions after Bulgaria and Romania are still far off. While absorption capacity is an important consideration for future enlargements, our most urgent challenge is to improve the functioning capacity of the current EU now.
Europe has rightly been criticised in the past for not acting while there was still time to stop instability turning into crisis. Too often in the 1990s, Brussels fiddled while the Balkans burned. We must not risk this happening again.
The writer is the European commissioner for enlargement |
