European Union: what kind of new Europe?

The ’new Europe’ which is joining the European Union has been likened recently to a US ’Trojan Horse’ inside the European project. And it is true that the new and old elites in power in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, notably in Poland, have adopted an Atlanticist and ultra-neoliberal orientation.[...]More than 75% of the populations of the candidate countries were opposed to military intervention in Iraq this February, and a relative majority (nearly 50%) persisted in opposing it, even in the event of a UN Security Council vote (whereas in this case, the majority in the EU supported intervention). The signature by a series of leaders of the ’new Europe’ and letters and declarations of support for the US position (mobilized in response to the anti-war positions of Chirac-Shroder) was heavily criticized inside these countries, since it was not the subject of any parliamentary debate and all the polls indicated the dominant hostility of the people in all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CCEE) which were candidates for EU membership - including Poland.This gap between the people and their ’representatives’ relates to the central questions of everyday life and work. During the discussions at the Convention, the ’delegates’ from Eastern Europe and particularly Poland supported Great Britain’s hostility to EU competence on social questions, the polls went exactly the opposite way. The populations of the future new members of 2004 were asked which decisions should be taken at the European level or at the national level alone - an average of around 70% thought that the EU should take responsibility for fighting unemployment and poverty, protection of the environment and health, social protection and humanitarian aid, indeed foreign policy.In other words, the people of the ’new Europe’ want a European ’social model’ that, undoubtedly, Sweden (which has just rejected joining the Euro) incarnates in their imagination. In voting nearly 80% in favour of joining the EU (see tables), some can certainly still believe in the promises of a rosy future inside an EU of whose real functioning they know little. But in the absence of a credible and progressive ’national’ alternative a new ’European consciousness’ is gaining ground. The idea is that it is easier to resist on this scale than on a national level alone (above all when the anti-Europeans in the Czech Republic, for example, preach an unrestrained Thatcherite capitalism; or when, from Hungary to Poland, they develop a racist and xenophobic nationalism) and that Europe incorporates long traditions of social and democratic struggles which can be built on.[...]Anyone can dream! But we should assess the contradictions reflected by this discourse. Contrary to what the EC says, this enlargement is not like the precedents. But it is still worth comparing it to its precedents, notably the entry into the European Economic Community (EEC - which became the European Union in 1993) of Greece (1981), Spain and Portugal (1986), because the hope of the new members is to have the same rights as the predecessors. Encouraging this hope, the dominant discourse stresses the stabilizing and modernizing influence the enlargement of the 1980s had on countries which, like the current new members, had emerged from dictatorship and were poorer and more agricultural than the EEC average at the time. Their average GDP represented 60% of the average GDP of the Community in 1986, while their combined population of around 60 million inhabitants, was not far off that of the new member states from eastern Europe (around 70 million).There should be no doubt - contrary to the widespread view - that political motivations were central to the acceleration of the new enlargement at the end of 1999. The use of Eastern Europe as a liberalized market and favoured terrain of relocation, was already a reality well before enlargement. More than 60% of the trade exchanges of these countries are made with the EU - and to the benefit of the latter. And if the future members have, since 2000, attracted more direct investment abroad - DIA (see box), many of the neoliberal currents in the CCEE fear that effective integration in the EU will involve social and institutional constraints and will lead to companies relocating even further east! Enlargement is a source of difficulties and major conflicts for the EU. This is already obvious at the institutional level, in the negotiations of the current IGC (intergovernmental conference), and will be even more so in the discussions on the 2007-2013 budget with new members who have more and more poor and unemployed people (whom the structural funds of the European budget should theoretically help)![...]However, the choice of previous enlargements had already increased the heterogeneity of the EU both on the socioeconomic and political planes - which is not a small detail in a construction where nation-states do not disappear, but are ’represented’ and should be subject to elections. Thus ’structural’ and ’cohesion’ funds were introduced and became important (they represent the second biggest expenditure of the European budget after the Common Agricultural Policy or CAP). These funds concern regions and countries where the GDP is less than 90% (in some cases less than 2/3) of the EU average and which are experiencing problems of restructuring and unemployment. In 1993, the four countries that benefited from the fund then introduced were Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland. The EU’s ’cohesion policy’ was part of the ’Community patrimony’ of which the new members should be beneficiaries, since they have a GDP very much below the EU average (nearly 70% for Slovenia, but less than 60% for the others - see box).[...]Also, the growth of the heterogeneity of the EU means growing conflicts where the essence of what is at stake will not be debated by those affected. In order for the new members to benefit from the same rights of access to the structural funds and the CAP as the old members, it would be necessary to at least double the EU budget. If the budget is kept at its current level, it is necessary either to give either less to the new members or to take from the south to give to the east, or to give less to everybody. A combination of all these processes has been chosen; Polish farmers will only receive 25% of the aid which French farmers will get in 2004 with alignment to 100% from here to 2013 - but from here to there the CAP aid will have fallen. This reform of the CAP is being carried through without the implications for farming (national, European and at a world level) being considered. The same is true for the social implications (in terms of jobs and food production, often essential to survival in the countries of eastern Europe without social protection); the environment and health implications (notably GMOs but also the question of pollution); the implications for international north/south relations visible in the WTO negotiations in Cancun (with dimensions also for the relations of western and eastern Europe). But where are the democratic and pluralist debates on these questions?As for the structural funds and the European budget, it is necessary to debate both their amount, resources and objectives (a budget of less than 1.27% of the GDP of the Union - whereas in the US for example it is around 20% - implies in practice very little means of redistribution from the very rich towards the very poor and very few common projects of infrastructure and development).[...]Some figures on the CCEE candidates (2000) A B C D E F G H IBulgaria 8.230.62274.1 18.3 70 33407 545Hungary 10.2 34.0 51 104.57.0 802 1935 2406Poland 38.6 35.237126.8 19.0 6513 7511255Rumania 22.3 42.7 27 77.010.0 6030 303 393Slovakia5.439.849102.7 18.3 75 1669 1874Slovenia2.048.071110.6 11.0 55 1768 2558Czech Rep. 10.2 34.1 59 97.712.0 80 1 2102 3375Estonia 1.4 26.2 37 84.1 12.4 75 40 1337 2468Latvia 2.4 26.3 27 64.1 13.1 65 23 1027 1137Lithuania 3.5 26.4 29 65.3 16.5 70 46 642 938A = Population (millions)B = Rural population % (1998)C = GDP/per capita (*) % of the average of the EU 15D = Real GDP in 2000 (1989 = 100)E = Rate of employmentF = Share of private sector in % of GDP (1999)G = Population on income below 4$ per day and by inhabitant in % (1998)H = DIA accrued (1989- 2000) per inhabitantI = DIA accrued/ inhab 2002 (*)Source: Courrier des pays de l’Est number 1016, June-July 2001(*) source UNCTAD FDI Database.NB The same sources give for Russia: 170.3 $/inhab of DIA accrued in 2002; real GDP in 2001 of 67.4 (1989=100)[...]Catherine Samary, University of Paris IX-Dauphinehttp://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article123