Now What? EU’s Constitution Crisis has Aspiring Members Fearful on Future

Analysis:

On Sunday June 5, the Grand Rapids Press ran an article from the associated press entitled “Now What: EU’s Constitutiton Crisis has aspiring members fearful of future”. As the headline implies, the reporter frames the story around the response of countries that want to be EU members rather than the EU members themselves. So, in examining the article, there are several voices quoted, all of them government sources. These various government voices are all from countries such as Bulgaria, Turkey or Romania, that is, countries that are not actually in the EU. No non-government voices are presented, neither are any EU voices. Since many of the governments of these non-EU countries are seeking to become EU members and saw the new constitution as the vehicle with which to achieve membership, this rejection by France and Holland of the new EU constitution is presented as a negative development.

Little is said in the article about why voters in France or Holland might be opposed to the proposed constitution. The article states several times that the constitution would have had great economic benefits. To quote, “the huge benefits to be gained from membership in a bloc that is home to 450 million people with the potential to rival the North American Free trade agreement grouping of Canada, Mexico, and the United states will remain within grasp”. It is interesting that the reporter compares the EU to NAFTA, uncritically using NAFTA as an example of how “free trade” agreements leads to economic prosperity. One of the main concerns of many French voters was the fact that this EU constitution would have instituted “free trade” economic policies very much like those put in place here through NAFTA. And as has been seen here with the loss of many higher paying manufacturing jobs to Mexico, many French workers were afraid of a similar development there with the possibility of better paying Western European jobs being outsourced to Eastern Europe. So certainly, it is quite possible that the EU constitution, at least the particular model that was offered, would not be a win-win for every country or for all sectors of the work force in those countries, and that reality was not addressed at all in this article.

Story:

By William J. Kole
Associated Press Writer
June 3, 2005

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Stuck on the sidelines, the nations with the most to lose in the European Union’s deadlock over its proposed new constitution could be the countries that don’t yet belong.

As Europeans took stock Thursday of the charter’s troubles, leaders and ordinary citizens in Turkey and across the former Soviet bloc worried that the crisis might conspire against their dreams of joining the EU.

Having worked tirelessly and against all odds to prepare for membership, many couldn’t help but wonder whether Europe is coming apart just when they’re getting their acts together.

This week’s momentous repudiations by the Dutch and the French – both founding members of the now 25-nation EU -“shattered the very concept for a European Union,” said Ivan Krastev, a political analyst in Bulgaria, which hopes to join with neighboring Romania in 2007.

Bulgaria’s independent Dnevnik newspaper echoed that bleak outlook, saying “the collapse of enlargement verges on national tragedy.”

“We witnessed Europeans rejecting something that we are struggling to achieve,” said Cetin Kargin, 41, a jeweler in Turkey. The mostly Muslim nation hopes to begin membership talks in October, but many Turks now worry that EU leaders will be too distracted to bother.

Across Eastern Europe, where eight countries joined the bloc a year ago along with Cyprus and Malta, and others have been scrambling to become credible candidates, the sense of frustration was palpable.

Spurred by dreams of unprecedented prosperity, stability and freedom of movement, EU candidates like Romania have spent the last decade constructing democracies and building market economies from scratch. Having invested so much, they have the most at stake.

Many reacted cautiously to the constitution’s latest setback, widely seen as a backlash against the growing power of EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and of the very expansion process that opened the club to the “new Europe.”
The resistance to the treaty, whose backers believed could lead to a better-oiled economy and a higher profile for Europe internationally, “could influence the future development of the EU” by freezing enlargement, acknowledged Dmytro Svystkov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry.

But the former Soviet republic “hopes that the EU’s difficult internal reform will not have negative consequences for Ukraine’s future membership,” Svystkov said, adding that the EU’s “attractiveness in the eyes of would-be members has not decreased.”

In Turkey, it may work the other way.

Ordinary Turks – tired of hearing that many Europeans don’t want their Islamic influence in the EU, and mindful that the country’s bid has fed the angst fueling opposition to the constitution – are losing interest in membership, analyst Duygu Bazoglu Sezer contends.

“Most have been expecting economic benefits. They will sense that the European Union is now on a downslide,” said Sezer, a professor of political science at Ankara’s Bilkent University. “The promising world has now perhaps lost its dynamism. That is the message that is beaming out.”

To be sure, the huge economic benefits to be gained from membership in a bloc that’s now home to 450 million people with the potential to rival the North American Free Trade Agreement grouping of Canada, Mexico and the United States will remain within grasp – with or without a charter.

For EU wannabes, membership will continue to represent a ticket to prosperity regardless of the grander themes of political union.

“It’s still worth getting into the EU for economic reasons, and I don’t think it will be worse for us than now,” said Denisa Somesean, a student of dentistry in Romania. She said the EU will go on as “a counterbalance to American dominance.”

Leaders and citizens in some of the bloc’s newest members, meanwhile, have been readjusting their expectations.
Countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic didn’t strike it rich overnight when they joined a year ago, and they don’t expect living standards to improve quickly now that EU leaders are preoccupied with salvaging the constitution.
Words of comfort came from an unusual source: Czech President Vaclav Klaus, an avowed Euroskeptic who sought to put things in perspective.

“Nothing is changing in Europe,” he told the Pravo newspaper. “Europe has been functioning without a constitution for half a century and will be functioning for another half a century.”