Reading that Slovenia continues to block the accession talks of Croatia due to nationalistic considerations is totally embarrassing.
I thought that with the agreement between both countries earlier this year this kind of things would have ended...
Showing posts with label enlargement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enlargement. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Iceland, do you want to marry me?
Somebody in my office and many people on Twitter told that the parliament of Iceland decided that the EFTA country will apply for EU membership - so it must be true.
What I think about this:
It will take some time until Iceland will actually become a member. Then the EU will be slightly larger, will have some more people, will need more translators and interpreters, will become a little more Nordic, discussions will be five minutes longer in the Council, and we will be able to pay EU funds towards Iceland.
They won't have to change much. We won't have to change much. It's like Malta joining the EU again, just colder and having the size of Portugal.
It's not like any of the Balkan states or Turkey, where a lot of reforms are still needed to be carried out and where our populations need to be convinced that it is good for all of us if these countries join as soon as ready.
Getting Iceland in the EU is like marrying your partner after you have lived with her/him for decades - it's not like adopting a grown-up child where you don't know how it will behave...
What I think about this:
It will take some time until Iceland will actually become a member. Then the EU will be slightly larger, will have some more people, will need more translators and interpreters, will become a little more Nordic, discussions will be five minutes longer in the Council, and we will be able to pay EU funds towards Iceland.
They won't have to change much. We won't have to change much. It's like Malta joining the EU again, just colder and having the size of Portugal.
It's not like any of the Balkan states or Turkey, where a lot of reforms are still needed to be carried out and where our populations need to be convinced that it is good for all of us if these countries join as soon as ready.
Getting Iceland in the EU is like marrying your partner after you have lived with her/him for decades - it's not like adopting a grown-up child where you don't know how it will behave...
Friday, 1 May 2009
Five years of European Union enlargement: A personal review
I know exactly where I was five years ago, midnight of the first of May 2004, the moment when the European Union was enlarged by 8 Central and Eastern European countries and two countries in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea.
I was in central Berlin, at a special party organised to celebrate the enlargement, and just before 12 we counted down from 10 - and at midnight, a good crowd of mostly young people greeted with joy our new "housemates".
That was a glad moment for Europe and the European Union, and I have to admit, also for me.
As a very francophile person, my eyes and my heart were directed rather to the West at that time. But the enlargement changed this perspective and I used one of the first opportunities to travel trough a number of the new member states. And just some nine month after the enlargement, I even moved to one of the new member states.
This was the start for my Re-Europeanisation, me who was already a convinced European at the time. But I re-centred my view of Europe; I learned to look at Europe as a wider concept, to understand the true meaning of its open space and the ideals of freedom and unity, I realised that Europe and this particular Union of countries were not just a goal to be reached but a potential for more aims to be achieved.
Since the enlargement, I have shared homes/appartments and (new) friendship with Bulgarians, Germans, Ukranians, Finns, Hungarians, Spanish, Estonians, Moldovans, Austrians, Serbs, Russians (the order is random), I've had good relationships to a number of other nationals, and think I have managed to speak to at least one person from almost every country of the continent over the last five years.
The enlargement, no mater what technical problems it might have caused and still causes, was a success, because it opened up perspectives, it enlarged not just the EU but it enlarged our horizons.
Yes, it is sometimes not easy to deal with a larger number of people and countries, because everyone has justified interests, hopes, and visions, every individual and, to a certain extent, every nation. But what we have to understand is that these interests are not really interests of countries and nations, they are, if we take away our national glasses, very similar problems of individuals and groups living in different but still comparable situations.
The average Polish farmer has no different interests to the average French farmer, and the IT specialist from Estonia thinks quite similar to the IT specialist in Ireland. Most people I have met share the wish to have the possibility to move freely - be it for a short trip, for a mid-term exchange, or for a lifetime and be it for 10 kilometres or 2,000 miles - as the potential to realise one's own small and bigger dreams. So we all have a similar story, no matter whether the actors look different and the directors have different styles.
The EU enlargement tells us this story, the story that we are able to integrate the "other" because actually this "other" is a lot like us.
We sometimes get lost in institutional discussions, which are correct because unity in diversity is not always a natural process but the result of well-designed organisational solutions, but the value of enlargement(s) and the perspective for enlargement are driving factors both for those in the club and those who want to join.
Without strong enlargement perspectives, from the Western Balkans, to the East European countries, and, whenever ready also for Turkey, there is no need and impetus to change minds, no need to reform, neither in these countries nor within the European Union. If we remain satisfied with what we have achieved, we lose the vision for what we still can do.
Today, I am celebrating five years of EU enlargement, and I am celebrating it with the hope and wish to soon be able to celebrate the next entries into the Union - also because I have understood another thing over the last years, too:
There is nothing better than to celebrate with fellow Europeans!
I was in central Berlin, at a special party organised to celebrate the enlargement, and just before 12 we counted down from 10 - and at midnight, a good crowd of mostly young people greeted with joy our new "housemates".
That was a glad moment for Europe and the European Union, and I have to admit, also for me.
As a very francophile person, my eyes and my heart were directed rather to the West at that time. But the enlargement changed this perspective and I used one of the first opportunities to travel trough a number of the new member states. And just some nine month after the enlargement, I even moved to one of the new member states.
This was the start for my Re-Europeanisation, me who was already a convinced European at the time. But I re-centred my view of Europe; I learned to look at Europe as a wider concept, to understand the true meaning of its open space and the ideals of freedom and unity, I realised that Europe and this particular Union of countries were not just a goal to be reached but a potential for more aims to be achieved.
Since the enlargement, I have shared homes/appartments and (new) friendship with Bulgarians, Germans, Ukranians, Finns, Hungarians, Spanish, Estonians, Moldovans, Austrians, Serbs, Russians (the order is random), I've had good relationships to a number of other nationals, and think I have managed to speak to at least one person from almost every country of the continent over the last five years.
The enlargement, no mater what technical problems it might have caused and still causes, was a success, because it opened up perspectives, it enlarged not just the EU but it enlarged our horizons.
Yes, it is sometimes not easy to deal with a larger number of people and countries, because everyone has justified interests, hopes, and visions, every individual and, to a certain extent, every nation. But what we have to understand is that these interests are not really interests of countries and nations, they are, if we take away our national glasses, very similar problems of individuals and groups living in different but still comparable situations.
The average Polish farmer has no different interests to the average French farmer, and the IT specialist from Estonia thinks quite similar to the IT specialist in Ireland. Most people I have met share the wish to have the possibility to move freely - be it for a short trip, for a mid-term exchange, or for a lifetime and be it for 10 kilometres or 2,000 miles - as the potential to realise one's own small and bigger dreams. So we all have a similar story, no matter whether the actors look different and the directors have different styles.
The EU enlargement tells us this story, the story that we are able to integrate the "other" because actually this "other" is a lot like us.
We sometimes get lost in institutional discussions, which are correct because unity in diversity is not always a natural process but the result of well-designed organisational solutions, but the value of enlargement(s) and the perspective for enlargement are driving factors both for those in the club and those who want to join.
Without strong enlargement perspectives, from the Western Balkans, to the East European countries, and, whenever ready also for Turkey, there is no need and impetus to change minds, no need to reform, neither in these countries nor within the European Union. If we remain satisfied with what we have achieved, we lose the vision for what we still can do.
Today, I am celebrating five years of EU enlargement, and I am celebrating it with the hope and wish to soon be able to celebrate the next entries into the Union - also because I have understood another thing over the last years, too:
There is nothing better than to celebrate with fellow Europeans!
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
Montenegro wants to join EU
There we go: News services report that Montenegro wants to join the European Union.
However,
Nevertheless, when you look at the georaphic position of Montenegro, it won't get into the Union before its main neighbours, no matter how quick it pursues its reforms. An EU peninsula Montenegra (assuming that Croatia joins the EU) will not be approved by the Council, and so Montenegro will most probably have to wait for Serbia and/or Bosnia to get ready anyway.
However,
"The commission says the country is still lagging behind in many fields and EU membership is not expected to occur in the very near future."But since the Czech EU-Council presidency seems to be interested to speed up the accession process for the Western Balkan states, Montenegro could get the candidate status during next year.
Nevertheless, when you look at the georaphic position of Montenegro, it won't get into the Union before its main neighbours, no matter how quick it pursues its reforms. An EU peninsula Montenegra (assuming that Croatia joins the EU) will not be approved by the Council, and so Montenegro will most probably have to wait for Serbia and/or Bosnia to get ready anyway.
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Debate: Should Ukraine join the EU and/or NATO?
I could spend quite some time formulating my opinion on this question, but instead I recommend reading the debate on this issue at the Central Europe Active blog. Just a short statement:
If it wants, an internally united Ukraine should get a membership perspective for the European Union; nevertheless, the process will take quite some time and enormous efforts.
But before you go to the debate, please first stop by atDante's Vitaliy's 8th Circle, because he was so kind presenting the translation of some recent figures on the public opinion in Ukraine concerning the accession of the country to the European Union. The figures confirm the divide of this big European country, although they leave some room for interpretation. Vitaliy does this in a more optimistic way while personally I would show some restraint.
If it wants, an internally united Ukraine should get a membership perspective for the European Union; nevertheless, the process will take quite some time and enormous efforts.
But before you go to the debate, please first stop by at
Why the USA should join the European Union
Stephen Colbert on the question, why and how the United States of America should "Join the European Union" (the video is still available, just click on it).
My favourite: "Geographical discrimination". Turkey can use this against France and Germany in the future...
My favourite: "Geographical discrimination". Turkey can use this against France and Germany in the future...
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Romanian foreign minister: "Continue enlargement!"
The Berlin-based newspaper "Tagesspiegel" has published an interview with the Romanian foreign minister Lazar Comanescu (in office since April).
While the four first questions concern the recent discussion about the EU-Commission report on Romania (and Bulgaria), with answers that are not too much news compared with what you can read everywhere else, and the fifth question is dedicated to the Romanian schedule to the Schengen area (mid-2011) and Eurozone (around 2014), I would like to translate the last question & answer of the interview:
First, that for Centre-East and East European countries the enlargement process is much more important than it is for some older member states, not least for France and Germany. And second, that even if the European Union seems stuck in this not-so-unexpected Irish "No!"-vote there is a life inside and outside the EU that keeps on going on, and that a more and more self-referential European Union will become less credible to the outside world.
And in this sense Lazar is right: A certain kind of credibility has been the attraction of the EU and, beside its economic strength, part of its regional (and maybe global) power. Anti-enlargement statements might be institutionally understandable, but politically they put in question the vision of the original project that sometimes seems to be lost between power games and bureaucratic argy-bargy.
While the four first questions concern the recent discussion about the EU-Commission report on Romania (and Bulgaria), with answers that are not too much news compared with what you can read everywhere else, and the fifth question is dedicated to the Romanian schedule to the Schengen area (mid-2011) and Eurozone (around 2014), I would like to translate the last question & answer of the interview:
Interviewer: French president Sarkozy and [German] chancellor Merkel have threatened to stop the enlargement process after the Irish "No" to the EU Reform Treaty. What do you think about it?While some of you might doubt whether the European Union has always proved that it keeps its promises, the answer of Lazar is a double reminder:
Lazar: Why is the EU so interesting for numerous states all over the world? Because in the past it has proved its ability to keep its promises. The EU has to stand by its promises also in the future - and this includes the enlargement process.
First, that for Centre-East and East European countries the enlargement process is much more important than it is for some older member states, not least for France and Germany. And second, that even if the European Union seems stuck in this not-so-unexpected Irish "No!"-vote there is a life inside and outside the EU that keeps on going on, and that a more and more self-referential European Union will become less credible to the outside world.
And in this sense Lazar is right: A certain kind of credibility has been the attraction of the EU and, beside its economic strength, part of its regional (and maybe global) power. Anti-enlargement statements might be institutionally understandable, but politically they put in question the vision of the original project that sometimes seems to be lost between power games and bureaucratic argy-bargy.
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