The European Union is already looking towards its next major enlargement. It does so with the lessons learned from the expansion towards the East of 2004, a true big Bang which added 10 countries to the community club – Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia – and which has represented one of the most significant steps in the almost 70 years of history of the Union . The accession of the Eastern partners, a politically, socially and economically diverse group, turns 20 this Wednesday in the midst of debate on a new extension to add Ukraine, a country at war, Moldova and the Balkans (the States that have not yet have been incorporated into the block). The balance for those Member States that have completed two decades in the common project and for the community club is enormously positive in all fields, but it has also entailed great challenges, such as the authoritarian drift of Poland and Hungary or the slower progress of social cohesion. than expected. This large incorporation has also represented an enormous challenge in the internal functioning of the EU, with structures that were conceived with a much smaller number of partners than the current one.
The great enlargement of 2004 added more than 70 million inhabitants to the European Union. With the next one, still in design and for which the community club will have to undertake previous reforms, EU citizens will be more than 500 million. “For the new members, the motivation for accessing the Union has been the strong desire to be part of this world of freedom and prosperity,” the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, launched this Tuesday at a commemoration ceremony. “Europe is much more than geography, it is an idea,” he noted. For the Union, which no longer wants gray areas with an imperialist power like Russia, whose large-scale war against Ukraine has entered its third year, the upcoming enlargement is also a matter of security.
The change in the new ones has been capital. The president of the European Commission has spoken these days of an “economic miracle” for these member states as a result of accession. Because if there is a mirror that applicants to join the Union can look at regarding what has happened in the last 20 years, it is the evolution of their economies. Most of its indicators are positive in practically the dozen countries that participated in the accession. The GDP per capita in many of them has grown very quickly. In Poland, the largest of all, it has doubled: from 6,900 euros per inhabitant in 2003 to 14,750 euros last year. Even greater leaps have been made in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia or Slovakia and somewhat less in Hungary, the Czech Republic or Slovenia, although the latter country was more advanced when it entered.
“The hope of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe was that their membership of the EU would boost growth and generate strong gains in their standard of living,” recalls researcher Sona Muzikárová, from the Atlantic Council analysis institute. After reviewing the current situation, she emphasizes that there is still some way to go because the Eastern countries are still “20%” below the EU average. “Entering the EU is not an automatic catalyst for convergence and prosperity,” she points out.
Beyond entry, the arrival of European funds to these States makes a big difference. And in this chapter, the money has arrived in the tens of billions (as it also did to Italy, Spain and Portugal before or now with the Recovery Fund). Poland, for example, has received in this time 160 billion euros from all the resources that are labeled as cohesion policy (Regional Development, European Social Fund, Cohesion Fund or Just Transition). The figure could go much higher if the money from the Common Agricultural Policy were added. 51 billion have arrived in Hungary and the Czech Republic and some 25 billion have arrived in Slovakia.
In the framework of these huge transfers, the former Hungarian socialist commissioner László Ándor points out that “the benefit of the EU Cohesion Policy is not simply that there is a net transfer to the poorest countries, but also the fact that the EU obliges these countries to take care of their weakest regions and also forces them to invest in human capital.” The now general secretary of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies does point out a deficiency in the 2004 enlargement: “It had a very weak social dimension. The eastern flank represents a second class where the welfare state is much weaker and the same could be said of labor relations: collective bargaining covers a minority of jobs and salaries do not grow with enough dynamism.
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Nationalist sentiment
This connoisseur of the wheels of Brussels points out, when asked what lessons can be drawn for the next enlargement, that the objective indicated by the president of the European Council of being ready by 2030 “is a realistic deadline.” He knows that in the Western countries of the EU, especially among the founders, there is a lot of reflection on this integration and reproaches are made about the steps backwards taken in Poland and Hungary regarding the rule of law, but he believes that they forget that support for The ultranationalist options that have guided these processes come “in part as a consequence of the asymmetric situations experienced during and after the EU accession process.” And he cites examples such as the demand to dismantle the sugar industry in the Czech Republic or Hungary to enter the Union or the rigidity with the deficit for Poland. “That gave rise to a sense of double standards and a stronger nationalist sentiment,” he notes.
Muzikárová, for her part, points out that a repeat of a large wave like that of 2004 will be difficult “due to the unique nature of Ukraine,” a country now partly occupied by Russia. However, she does point to a lesson for future enlargement: “Experience suggests that Ukraine and other countries will reap the greatest benefits from EU membership by rooting out corruption, achieving strong governance and building public institutional capacities for high quality”.
That division between the “old” and the “new” partners—in 2007 Bulgaria and Romania joined; in 2013, Croatia—is also perceived in the perception of the next major enlargement. Its own realities, the path to prosperity and its own historical heritage under Russia’s attempts to extend its umbrella of influence have left a mark. While in Austria (53%), Germany (50%) and France (44%) a majority of respondents believe that the EU should not undertake any immediate enlargement, the majority in Romania or Poland believe that it should do so, according to the latest survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank.
Although going down to the ground, a majority of Europeans are concerned about whether this new large enlargement that is now being debated in Brussels – a much clearer reality after the decision to open accession negotiations with Kiev at the end of last year – could pose risks. for the security of the Union. 45% believe that adding Ukraine could have a “negative impact,” according to the ECFR survey. There has also already been an appetizer of the tensions that may arise when Ukraine, the largest country in Europe, eminently agricultural, and whose reconstruction will require tens of billions of euros, joins. The very idea has strained the seams of the Eastern partners, where there have been protests by farmers that have revealed that a reform of cohesion and agricultural policy will also be needed.
Candidates, such as Moldova, Ukraine and the Balkans, are accelerating on the path of their reforms to assimilate to European standards – economic, political, legal or anti-corruption measures. And meanwhile, Brussels debates how to undertake this new expansion. This will be “gradual” in certain policies already before its accession, as the Commission noted in a communication on the enlargement in March. That will anticipate certain benefits and obligations of EU membership.
One of these obligations is that the reforms will place greater prior emphasis on compliance with the rule of law and on making the club’s economic benefits more conditional on this. It is the lesson learned from the case of Poland, which was first the advantaged student and later became the wayward partner due to its authoritarian drift. Now the new Executive of Donald Tusk is reversing it, but the setback led, as still happens with Hungary, to freeze billions of euros in European funds. The upcoming enlargement towards the East will be the great test that the Union faces and can become an immense economic, social and democratic challenge.
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