Working Papers 41 (2003)
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A Hole in the Wall? Dimensionalism and the EU’s “New Neighbourhood Policy” Hiski Haukkala Researcher The Finnish Institute of International Affairs [email protected] http://www.hiskihaukkala.net Working Papers 41 (2003) Ulkopoliittinen instituutti (UPI) – The Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) The Finnish Institute of International Affairs (Ulkopoliittinen instituutti, FIIA) was established in 1961 on the initiative of the Paasikivi Society and it is an independent think tank maintained by the Foundation for Foreign Policy Research. FIIA’s mission is to produce high-standard, analytical information on international relations required in foreign policy decision-making and to assist in the formation of informed and critical public opinion. It accomplishes this mission by organizing research projects on timely topics, maintaining national and international research networks, and arranging lectures, seminars and conferences. Key research findings are published in the form of books and reports. FIIA also publishes Ulkopolitiikka, a quarterly review in Finnish, and The Yearbook of Finnish Foreign Policy, an annual publication in English. FIIA maintains a library which is at the disposal of anyone interested in international relations and foreign policy. The Finnish Institute of International Affairs Mannerheimintie 15 A FIN-00260 Helsinki tel. +358 9 4342 070 fax +358 9 4342 0769 http://www.upi-fiia.fi ISBN 951-769-145-9 ISSN 1456-1360 Ulkopoliittinen instituutti Helsinki 2003 Contents Introduction 1 The EU Enlargement as a Process of Inclusion and Exclusion 4 A Hole in the Wall? Dimensionalism and the EU’s Quest for Stability 11 Conclusions 19 Introduction1 The successive rounds of enlargements are a factor shaping the European Union. The previous enlargements have all resulted in the broadening of the EU’s agenda, changes in the institutions and decision-making, as well as shaping the way in which the world external to the Union has perceived the European integration and its different manifestations, be they institutions or policies. 2 There is dialectic at work, where the “shadow of enlargement” forces the European Union and its member states to adapt its own dynamic to meet the changing circumstances. This adaptation – together with the growing geographic exposure to new neighbours and regions – in turn create an opening and a demand for further enlargements, which then start the dialectic anew. This dialectic applies also in the EU’s external relations. The point of contact where this is felt most urgently is, of course, at the current – and with the advent of the “Big Bang” enlargement in 2004 already in sight – at the future outer boundaries of the European Union.3 The countries emerging at the outskirts of the enlarging Union (the “new neighbours”) are always also potential future members. The logic of an empire is partly at work here. 1 This Working Paper was previously presented under the same title at the “The Baltic World as a Multicultural Space”, 5th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, Turku, on the 5th of June 2003. I want to thank all the participants for a lively and interesting debate in the session. 2 Hiski Haukkala ja Hanna Ojanen, “Ulko- ja turvallisuuspolitiikan haasteet”, in Tapio Raunio and Teija Tiilikainen, eds, Euroopan rajat: Laajentuva Euroopan unioni (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2002), p. 204. 3 The Copenhagen European Council in December 2002 decided on the accession of ten new members: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. 1 But the EU is a reluctant empire, ever aware of the dangers posed by the entry of newcomers into the club. Nevertheless the new neighbours require a response from the Union. This calls for new relationships and policies on the part of the EU. In the past they have varied from treating the new neighbours as potential EU candidates and engaging with them through the accession process, to offering different “partnerships” which have often been spiced with the element of a prospective free trade area with the European Union. But in the future the EU’s new neighbours will increasingly fall into the category of countries that the EU cannot, or does not want to, integrate (or, as in the case of Russia, are themselves unwilling to be integrated). This is reflected in the emergence of different “dimensions” at the outer edges of EU-Europe. It is important to note, that this dimensionalism is a by-product of the successive rounds of EU enlargements. The emergence of new dimensions is in a sense an (unintended?) external manifestation of the limits of expanding what is basically an internal process of the Union. At times it seems that it is also an unwanted phenomenon for the Union. Therefore, and especially in the light of the current, fifth round of EU enlargement, it is clear that the dimensionalization is a form of exclusion. You become a partner in a given dimension if you are not entitled to become a member of the Union itself. 4 4 Previously the picture has not been as clear-cut as this. The Northern Dimension departed from the notion that one of its tasks was to “facilitate EU enlargement” to the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC). After the decisions taken in Copenhagen, however, it is clear that also the Northern Dimension will lose its role as an avenue towards closer institutional association with the Union. The “southern” and the newly emerging “eastern” dimensions have of course no pretensions of offering membership to its partners. 2 The aim of this paper is twofold. First it analyses the limits of enlarging the Union. To put it bluntly, for its members the European integration is meaningful as a process only as long as it is built on a demarcation of the internal from the external to the project. Often this fact is put to words in the form that it is the integrity of the Community legislation, the acquis communautaire, and the viability of common institutions that have to be preserved, and it is because of this that the European project cannot keep on enlarging indefinitely. For the Union, the stakes are high. To quote the President of the European Commission Romano Prodi, “we cannot go on enlarging forever. We cannot water down the European political project and turn the European Union into just a free trade area on a continental scale.”5 But even if Mr. Prodi has it right, and the European integration has its own internal imperatives for setting the limits to its territorial enlargement, the Union cannot escape the fact that the new neighbours are subjecting Union and its policies with demands for belonging as well as for assistance and support from the Union. And therein lays another, this time an external imperative for the Union: the need to ensure stability on the wider European continent. 6 Therefore, and as its second task, the paper takes also a look at one of the dimensions, the Northern Dimension (ND), in order to find out whether, and under what criteria, the new dimensionalism at the outskirts of the Union can be seen as an answer to the external challenges and demands that the EU will be facing in the aftermath of its “Big Bang” enlargement in 5 Romano Prodi, A Wider Europe – A Proximity Policy as the key to stability. A speech at the “Peace, Security and Stability – International Dialogue and the Role of the EU” Sixth ECSA-World Conference, Brussels, 5-6- December 2002. 6 Antonio Missiroli, “The EU and its Changing Neighbourhood: Stabilization, Integration and Partnership”, in Roland Dannreuther, ed., The European Union Foreign and Security Policy: Towards a Neighbourhood Strategy (forthcoming). 3 2004. Can it help the Union to preserve the stabilizing logic of enlargements even after the EU can no longer enlarge? The EU Enlargement as a Process of Inclusion and Exclusion The Cold War and its bipolar overlay served the western Europeans very well, for it meant that they could take the concept of “Europe” as their own property without having to bother to think about where the outer limits of European integration really lay. 7 This changed with the end of the Cold War, as the European Union was flooded with membership applications from the central and eastern European countries (CEECs). Although the EU’s initial reaction to the sea change in Europe was positive, and it was backed up with an offer of financial assistance in the form of the PHARE programme, full membership for the CEECs was not in the cards. At the time the EU had other priorities, such as the completion of its Single Market, negotiating the Treaty on European Union as well as responding to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, and the Gulf War. 8 A decade later, the European Union and its member states have still not been able to decide where the ultimate boundaries of European integration actually lie. The decision by the Helsinki European Council of December 1999 to expand the group of negotiating countries to twelve (+ Turkey waiting in line) did not reflect a true strategic choice on the future 7 William Wallace, “From Twelve to Twenty-Four? The Challenges to the EC Posed by the Revolutions in Eastern Europe”, in Colin Crouch and David Marquand (eds), Towards Greater Europe? A Continent without an Iron Curtain (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), p. 34. 8 Graham Avery and Fraser Cameron, The Enlargement of the European Union (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), p. 15. 4 composition of the European Union. 9 Nor did the Copenhagen European Council’s decision in December 2002 on the accession of ten new members in 2004 solve the problem, either. This is because many “outsiders”, for example, the Balkan countries and Ukraine, are still pressing hard for eventual membership, whereas it is likely that one of the already accepted “insiders”, Turkey, is not likely to become a member very soon.