A sober ceremony was held in Dublin Saturday to celebrate the EU’s enlargement from 15 to 25 member countries, Le Figaro (France, 05/03) reports.
All European leaders attended the celebrations which included the symbolic rising of the accession countries flags. The Irish, who currently hold the Union’s presidency, put the stress on the „diversity“ which would enrich the existing Europe. In the welcoming speech, the President of the Republic of Ireland Mary MacAleese said that „Europe is old but the Union is young, and we are only at the beginning of our possibilities.“
The Financial Times (05/01) notes the big bang expansion of the EU from 15 to 25 members changes the face of the union. As a trading bloc, it now stretches from the Atlantic to the steppes of Ukraine. It has a combined gross domestic product of EUR 10,124,138 billion bigger than that of the US. However, the eight former Soviet bloc members — Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia — remain overwhelmingly poor.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany, 05/03) writes the current level of prosperity in the new member countries is not even half the level of what it is in the old EU states. The latter saw per capita rates of about 24,300 euros in 2003, while the new states show rates of, on average, 11,840 euros. Aside from a functional regional market of 450 million consumers, an intra-European financial transfer is one of the most important requirements to lower the wealth gap within the new Union and hence key for a successful enlargement in the East.
The Australian (05/03) writes the expansion of the European Union will send billions of dollars of new government aid flowing into eastern Europe each year, in one of the largest deliberate redistributions of wealth across national borders ever seen. But much of that money will be diverted from funds that previously had gone to the poorer regions of the older EU members, and western Europe is only now starting to calculate the extent to which those regions will lose out from that process. Michel Barnier, the EU’s commissioner for regional affairs who stepped down a month ago to become France’s Foreign Minister, warned that the only way to stop those regions from being suddenly stranded by the redirection of aid towards the east was to increase the total pool of funds spent on poor regions each year from 30 billion euros to 50 billion euros. According to Barnier, the gap between rich and poor within the EU will double after expansion, with the wealthiest region, inner London, having average incomes nine times those of the poorest parts of Poland.
The Financial Times (05/01) writes that the ten new members will face the bureaucratic and financial costs of adjusting to Brussels‘ many rules and the challenge of improving their ropy welfare systems while maintaining fiscal discipline, without the financial featherbedding in farm subsidies and structural aid that previous poorer EU entrants have been given. But they enter the EU on a higher growth path than at least the 12 existing members of the eurozone, and should be able to sustain this on the back of their lower labor costs. This factor has already attracted substantial outside investment with, for instance, foreign car manufacturers turning Slovakia into Europe’s Detroit.
The Washington Post (02/05) writes many analysts said that Ireland is the perfect example for the new members of the Union. People refer to the Irish miracle, a path the mostly poorer newcomers to the EU are hoping to follow. [But] the new members could find it difficult to follow the Irish path to success, [some] experts said. They received far less generous terms than existed when Ireland joined three decades ago, and Ireland had some unique characteristics not easily replicated elsewhere, analysts said. As English speakers, the Irish were able to quickly establish a financial base, particularly for American companies.
The Independent (UK, 05/03) notes leaders the European Union are deadlocked over who should be the next president of the European Commission after the surprise emergence of Chris Patten, the commissioner for external relations, as a likely candidate. Informal discussions at an EU summit in Dublin failed to yield a frontrunner to succeed Romano Prodi, who stands down in October. While Downing Street officials have said that no decision has been taken on who the British Government would back for the position, it was made clear that Patten was someone it „could do business with“. Patten, who is scheduled to serve as a British commissioner at the EU until September, is known to be close to Tony Blair, and as a former chairman of the Conservative Party could be used to show that the European project has cross-party support. In order for Patten to succeed, France would have to be compensated in the form of another senior post.
Agence France Presse (05/02) meanwhile notes the new EU goes back to work this week with 25 members and the long-term economic consequences of its historic enlargement could prove greater than the continent’s political reunification. The European Union is now a market of 455 million people, more than half again the size of the United States, putting the EU third behind China and India. With a comparable 2003 gross domestic product of EUR 9.746 trillion according to the EU’s statistics unit Eurostat, the union now rivals the US as the world’s largest economy, though the latter is growing faster.
The Associated Press (05/30) meanwhile notes that while new European Union members celebrated, their left-out neighbors stood outside the rope and watched the party Friday, wondering when or if they will join Europe’s exclusive club of the stable and prosperous. An entire swathe of countries, from Belarus and Russia in the north to Albania in southern Europe, are seeing their relative poverty and outsider status reinforced with the eastward push of the union’s borders at the stroke of midnight. Some, like Croatia and Romania, have a chance to get in over the next several years. Others, burdened by shriveled economies and international concern about human rights, can only dream of meeting the tough requirements for economic reform and democracy.
The news comes as The Financial Times (05/03) reports that the European Union’s „big bang“ expansion from 15 to 25 members, celebrated over a weekend of emotion and ceremony, will never be repeated, Romano Prodi, European Commission president, said yesterday. Prodi said the EU would soon be full and that there was no prospect of countries such as the former Soviet republics of Ukraine or Belarus becoming members. Instead he predicted the creation of a „ring of friends“ for Europe, a zone of co-operation stretching from the Baltic through the Middle East to North Africa.
La Tribune (France, 05/03) meanwhile notes that the next enlargement of the European Union will welcome Bulgaria and Romania, even if the two countries do not progress at the same pace. Reforms are well under way in both countries, but Bulgaria is still up front thanks to the approval of 31 chapters of EU regulations. Romania has only managed to match 22 chapters. Still, the European Commission hopes that both Bulgaria and Romania will be able to sign the accession treaty at the beginning of 2005, two years before the effective accession in 2007. The major problems that remain to be solved are corruption and low average income.
In a separate piece, La Tribune (France, 03/05) reflects on the partnership between the EU and North African countries. According to the French business daily, the North African press sees the EU enlargement as a threat, a giving-up or the evidence of euro-centrist selfishness. The criticism mainly points at the overflow of investment in the accession countries compared to the small amount of FDI in North Africa. According to one expert, there is a misunderstanding between the EU and North Africa on the very meaning of the enlargement. The former is firmly looking eastwards and the latter has not yet understood that it was not concerned by it and should not hope to accede to the EU.