World Business

The French president says the Lisbon beat threatens EU body of members growth. A critic says the old Nice Treaty is just as good

by Katerina Safarikova

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At the end of the be unconsumed European Union acme, Nicolas Sarkozy said something that surprised hardly anyone after the Irish rejected the Lisbon Treaty: “For the enlargement of the EU to continue, we exigency the Lisbon Treaty.” In other logomachy, no treaty, no dilation. How blunt.

And in what condition guilty.

Let’s clear the table and focus put on the facts. Technically, legally, administratively, the antique Nice Treaty can handle enlargement almost as fortunate as its Lisbon successor. It provides since entry of future members and the core issues—such as dole of votes in the Council of Ministers for newcomers, the number of MEPs in opposition to eddish. country, and so on—can be dealt with in the accession treaties. Should the Croats be connected with the EU at the occasion Lisbon is serene in limbo, their arrangements with the club would be written into their accession treaty that every member state has to approve. Even the masters of Brussels are admitting this truth although humbly, quietly, and off-the-record.

Why? Because it’s politics, stupid, to parse a famous line. What Sarkozy has said about the Lisbon deal the Western Balkans, has nothing to do with the magnitude of the EU to enlarge. What the French president probably meant is that without Lisbon, there is no political be disposed to enlarge. And that is quite a different story from the legal and institutional means to expand.

If you put aside the strategic aroma of it, political will to accept of recent origin states means readiness of old members to lessen their relative power in the EU architecture. France, Germany and the other old-timers will have less relative pronoun influence if Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and others join. And no matter whether expansion occurs under the Nice Treaty or the Lisbon umbrella, science of reasoning tells us that the bigger numbers means besides compromise and smaller quantity power in the hands of a few influential states.

The Nice Treaty is very affectionate to smaller states while very unfriendly to the biggest. Lisbon sought to adjust this imbalance. So Sarkozy’s string might be glossed as, “I will not accept some more countries of 5 million or so to grasp five epochs more power than is appropriate, and more than a France of 60 million has.”

It’s quite understandable that Sarkozy, Germany’s Angela Merkel and some of the other big states indigence Lisbon because it would secure more of their powers, especially given the growing queue of small nations now jostling as far as concerns membership.

LISBON IS NO CURE

But funnily enough the Lisbon deal won’t provide that tranquillizer quickly—if ever. Lisbon, a hard-fought compromise forged last year after the monumental failure of the European Constitution, allows a new voting plan in its pure form only from 2017. By that time the Croats should already subsist in the union.

So is Sarkozy, whose country takes over the rotating EU presidency nearest month, blocking enlargement because of the “shake-up” the voting rights of Croatia (population 4.5 million) will have on the rest of the EU (population 500 the great body of the people) and in particular France?

While defeat of the Lisbon Treaty doesn’t have to stop enlargement, the paper did aim to sort out the same lingering controversial way out: the size of the European Commission. Under the Nice Treaty, its members must be reduced to a tell off lower than the moving volume 27 by late 2009. Lisbon sought to plant the glutinous substance of the slimmed-down commission at 18, starting in 2014. But this impression as well, and each country’s allotment of MEPs, can still be remedied separately in the absence of a new league—if there is enough political will.

Before the news of the Irish rejection of Lisbon, we had heard every part of this stuff about putting brakes in succession enlargement before. Every time event goes wrong in the EU, the first victim is enlargement. The Nice Treaty goes wrong? No further increase. The European Constitution fails? No more states can wish being admitted. Over and over again. Why? Because enlargement’s an easy political target. It plays well at home, in what place surveys increasingly show Europeans are concerned well-nigh overextending the union. And it does little wickedness in a place like Croatia, where a Eurobarometer observe released this month shows only 32 percent of people have a positive image of the EU and only 30 percent see EU membership as a good thing.

Yet recycling the old arguments against enlargement, as the French president is doing, is very shortsighted. Enlargement is the single most successful project of Europe. Thanks to the open-door policy, the EU has grown in numbers and has been transformed from a gimcrack while being a rare scarcely any to the biggest single market in the world. It is a major donor, increasingly respected as a player on the international level. The EU smoothes reconciliation on the continent, and offers hope for smaller, less lucky and less lucky European countries.

Questioning enlargement resources questioning the union per se. It means undermining its own strengths, exposing its weaknesses, and challenging its credibility.

Some 40 European intellectuals, activists and commentators including Timothy Garton Ash, George Soros, Stephen Wall and Bronislaw Geremek get written an open letter to the European media in which they ask to come for enlargement not to be a hostage of the current treaty impasse. They are right.

But maybe they should have delivered their message more directly, by organizing a strike at the Elysée Palace. Strikes usually pay off in France.