The necessity for EU Enlargement … or…it’s a great idea in practice, just how will it work in theory?

[Harold Schiffman]

The necessity for EU Enlargement… or…it's a great idea in practice,
just how will it work in theory?

March 6, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in European Union.

I'm not keeping up with Lisbon, and part of that is because I've read
as much as I can and remain reasonably unworried by the treaty. Now
lest that sound like a description of smug complacency (or peevish
defeat in the face of the Euro juggernaut) let me hasten to add that
it ain't so. Many years ago I did a fair bit of research on the
European Union for Democratic Left - unpaid, needless to say. It was
an entertaining experience because quite a bit of what I was looking
at was material relating to the Foreign and Security Policy. The party
was convinced that this was a devious blow to our neutrality and
therefore I went scouring looking for evidence… well, that's probably
a tad unfair. But more accurately the party was not entirely enamoured
with the CFSP side of things and my task was to see what was lurking
in the fine print. To be frank the more I read the less I disagreed
and eventually came to the conclusion that our neutrality, such as it
was, remained safe.

In those days I was very much the federalist. And those instincts
remain. But… there's also part of me which while entirely happy with
the project to date sees no pressing urgency to push forward at full
speed. Unlike sharks I tend to believe that the EU will survive even
if it moves into a somewhat less predatory mode. And I'm saying that
as one who will, I'm more or less certain, vote yes come the day of
the Lisbon referendum. And there is a stray part of me that just for
the craic wouldn't mind seeing a No vote. Something along the lines of
'… well guys, how are you going to deal with that then?'. Of course,
the answer is, as it always is in such things, that we would then have
a date with destiny sometime later with a more streamlined Lisbon
Treaty. Not the worse thing in the world, but accompanied by mountains
of hyperbole perhaps something best to be avoided. If it were done at
all, better it were done quickly.

So, reading last months Prospect
(http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10016) what
should I see in their EU monitoring column but the following
interesting nugget of information under the headline "Do we need a
Treaty after all?"

The main justification for the treaty of Lisbon is that without its
institutional changes, the enlarged EU will become gridlocked. That
argument has become a great deal less convincing following the
publication of a study by Helen Wallace, the far from Eurosceptic
professor in the European Institute at the LSE. Instead of the
predicted paralysis, it's been business rather better than usual
following the admission of ten countries in 2004 (it's too early to
judge the impact of Romania and Bulgaria's entry, she says).There has
been a modest drop in the volume of legislation adopted but also a
reduction in the time lag between proposals being made and decisions.

And it gets better.

Meanwhile, the member states which joined in 2004 have an
"astonishingly good record in transposing decisions into national law"
and have, on average, faced fewer infringement proceedings than their
longer-established counterparts. There is no sign of the European
parliament succumbing to gridlock, and the advent of the new member
states has consolidated the use of English as the dominant language
within the EU. Wallace's findings were not front-page news, but expect
them to be rehearsed in detail as treaty ratification works its way
through parliament.

Now the column also notes that the "length of time taken for cases to
be decided in the European court of justice has gone down".

This has made something of a stir on the anti-Lisbon side with
lobbying group Libertas
(http://www.libertas.org/content/view/191/110/) affording it a brief
note as follows:

European leaders have claimed that the purpose of this Treaty is to
streamline the legislative process in the European institutions yet a
recent report by Professor Helen Wallace of the London School of
Economics has found that legislation has actually progressed more
swiftly since the 2004 when ten new member states joined the EU.
Earlier this year, a report by the Science-Po University in Paris
showed that new rules have been adopted 25% faster than prior to
enlargement and that the Nice voting arrangements were generally seem
to be working well.

So what does Wallace say in the Report (which is available on the web)?

Well, under the heading 'The key data on output from the EU
institutions' we learn that…

• There has been a modest reduction in the volume of legislation
(definitive legislative acts) adopted. Over the period 1999-2003 an
average of around 195 legislative acts were adopted each year (but
only 164 in 2002 and 165 in 2003); around 230 were adopted in 2004
(with a surge in April 2004 just before the EU15 became the EU25);
some 130 were adopted in 2005: and 153 in 2006 . Data need to be added
for non-legislative decisions, increasingly important in fields such
as foreign policy and some aspects of justice and home affairs, where
activity levels have been high. Mattila(forthcoming 2008) reports that
some 942 acts other than legislative decisions were agreed between May
2004 and December 2006. Of the 360 (Hagemann and De Clerk-Sacchse
2007) legislative decisions adopted between May 2004 and December 2006
some 43 were identified as revisions to existing legislation to
incorporate the new member states. Settembri (2007) reports that
decisions taken show an increase in 'ordinary' or 'minor' subjects,
and a decrease of 11% in what he classifies as the more 'important'
topics.

One might argue that in some areas there have been improvements…

• There has been a reduction in the time lag between proposal and
decision on both those subject to the unanimity rule and those based
on qualified majority voting(QMV) treaty articles. This is so
especially for decisions under the consultation procedures with the
European Parliament (EP), including many on agricultural issues, where
the data indicate a 5% reduction in the time taken to reach agreement.
Issues subject to codecision take somewhat longer than before
(Settembri (2007) notes that during the one-year period which he
covers that this means some 22% more days). Interestingly, however, a
rising proportion of decisions subject to codecision have been reached
at first reading: 2003-34%; 2004-45%; 2005-64%; 2006-59%. In 2006 a
revised joint declaration was adopted by the EU institutions, designed
to improve the efficiency of the codecision procedure.

But in an illuminating piece note the following…

• As regards differences among policy sectors, Best and Settembri
(forthcoming 2008a) indicate that environmental issues seem prominent
among those that have taken longer to decide (plus 5%) in the period
that they survey in detail. Hagemann and De Clerck- Sachsse (2007)
report a dropping off of levels of Council output in both JHA and
energy/transport sectors, despite a modest increase in proposals from
the Commission in these areas. We should, however, note that output in
JHA reached a high peak on 2002 and 2003, dipped in 2004 and 2005 and
started to rise again in 2006, in a field where there is little
recorded voting contestation but a high level of formal statements
noting particular concerns by individual member states. Peterson and
Birdsall (forthcoming 2008) comment that a further factor was the
suspended status of the Constitutional Treaty, which included
provisions to increase the aspects of JHA subject to QMV, where member
states in the Council proved reluctant to agree to a number of
Commission proposals that sought to activate the passerelle clause
(this allows issues to be moved from the third to the first pillar).
One other straw in the wind as regards JHA – on 12 June 2007 it was
decided to move to incorporate the Treaty of Prüm within the EU
framework, a Treaty signed originally entirely outside the EU by 7 old
member states, rather than to persist with an initiative outside the
EU framework. By April 2007 10 more EU members had already asked to
accede, among which 5 new members (including Bulgaria and Romania).
Further research is needed to establish how far enlargement as such
might account for the yearly variations in output in individual policy
sectors.

Without further data it is near impossible to come to a determination
on the nature of the individual decisions, but it's interesting that
environmental issues might incur a delay. JHA falling is also
interesting. One wonders whether the post 9/11 context was responsible
in part for that activity in 2002 onwards. Fascinating too to see
'particular concerns by individual member states'. The Union has yet
to emphatically impinge on state sovereignty in the way some of its
detractors suggest. Of course, one caveat. If the means of assessing
the efficacy or otherwise of policy and decision making is incorrect
then we're still in the dark. This report seems accurate enough,
but…'further research' is obviously necessary.

The conclusions are as follows:

• The evidence of practice since May 2004 suggests that the EU's
institutional processes and practice have stood up rather robustly to
the impact of enlargement to EU25 in May 2004.
• It is too soon to have systematic evidence on the impact of the
further enlargement to EU27 with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania
in January 2007.
• Part of the 'success' of adaptation is related to the long period of
prior adjustment and learning experiences of the pre-accession
periods, including the establishment of 'state and judicial capacity'
in candidate countries, even though the early evidence on
implementation sheds some doubt on this at least in some instances.
• It is also the case that other factors are at work that probably
account for some of the evolution in institutional practice and
differential policy progress since May 2004, not least the
reorientation of Council and Commission priorities for future
business.
• The analyses published so far provide only limited insights into how
far enlargement may have impacted on the scope for reaching agreement
in particular policy areas. Some of the evidence suggests that the
trickiest areas will be those that relate to levels of social and
economic development, where any arising problems may be much more
evident in the relevant member states than in the workings of the EU
institutional system as a whole.
Nonetheless there remains scope for continuing to identify practical
and pragmatic ways and means of enabling the EU system through
non-treaty reform to perform effectively in changed circumstances.

The third point is extremely important. The EU is educative mechanism
as much as anything. It provides standards. That these are not met in
certain cases, particularly one thinks of the economic front, does not
negate the fact that it encourages compliance to broadly agreed
approaches across a range of areas. For myself I think this is a good
thing in and of itself. And it strikes me as heartening that the
pre-accession phase was sufficiently comprehensive in terms of that
educative process that by the time new states arrived they were
actually strongly integrated into the EU structures. Across a range of
areas dear to the left this can only be a good thing. Indeed I suspect
that in this country it accounts for the fact that most leftists
beyond the further left remain relatively supportive of the European
project, because so much of the improvements seen in this country in
terms of rights (and as importantly in terms of upholding rights)
originated in Europe. Which is not to ignore the reality of an EU
which has a strong, an overly strong, commercial aspect to it, but to
say that it can be a tool for progressive policies if used properly.

And let's remember that although agreement across so many members may
be difficult to arrive at, it's clearly not impossible, and
realistically a lot of the work is done well before any meetings. So
where does this point? A larger, but somewhat slower Union that of
necessity must move more by consensus on the big issues and allow
considerable scope for national opt-outs. The decision facing all of
us, in Ireland at least, is whether the Treaty underwrites that. And
this Report, while useful, only addresses one aspect of the Treaty.
There is much much more to it which also has to be considered. I also
hear from sources closer in to these processes that there is
considerable difficulty in the organisational aspects of the 27,
simply in logistical terms. That's another factor.

Incidentally I can think of one good reason for voting for Lisbon…
consider Article 49(A), despite the fact it's one article I'd never
like to see put into practice, but I think on a purely democratic and
functional basis it's absolutely necessary…

"ARTICLE 49 A
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in
accordance with its own
constitutional requirements.
2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European
Council of its
intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European
Council, the Union shall
negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the
arrangements for its
withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future
relationship with the Union. That
agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 188 N(3) of
the Treaty on the
Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of
the Union by the
Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the
European Parliament.
3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the
date of entry into
force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after
the notification referred to
in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the
Member State concerned,
unanimously decides to extend this period.
4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European
Council or of the
Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not
participate in the discussions of
the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

Meanwhile, there is other intriguing information to be gleaned from
the report. Consider the following:

• There is an even stronger predominance than before of English as the
primary working language, which had already been boosted by the 1995
enlargement, although the minutes of meetings of the college of
commissioners are still written first in French Ciavarini Azzi(2006).
In 2006 the Commission reported (JTS website) that (of the one and a
half million pages handled by its translation services) 72% came from
English as the source language, 14% from French, 2.7% from German and
10.8% from other official languages. In practice it has proved
difficult to recruit enough translators and interpreters to provide
the language support which the EU institutions now need.

The final point is telling. This was always going to be an issue, one
way or another with so many member states, but logic suggests the
reduction to a few (although hardly a single) working languages. That
it is English is a curious irony, considering the arms length approach
to the EU by the British. I'm guessing that the reason for the primacy
of English is in part due to the new members from Eastern Europe.

And here is another nugget.

There is something of a centre-right bias in the composition of the
current Commission college and in the political orientation of its
proposals, including the revival of the Lisbon agenda and the adoption
of the 'better regulation' key words for the Commission's approach to
legislation. This reflects changes in the composition of member
governments which make the nominations of Commissioners, and is also
reflected in the shifting composition of the Council as governments
change. Thus the emphasis has shifted to some extent to softer forms
of agreement than traditional hard law, and the hunt is meant to be on
for repealing or simplifying legislation (as further emphasised by the
Spring 2007 European Council). Peterson and Birdsall(forthcoming 2008)
report that enlargement was encouraging the Commission to be more open
to the use of new modes of governance (ie softer forms of policy
development).

As ever with the EU this seems to point in at least two directions. On
the one hand the federal project seems to have ended. On the other the
inexorable logic of the free(ish) market pushes aside notions of state
sovereignty (in a way which perhaps should have socialists scribbling
down notes so we can learn something). Last night in the British
Parliament we saw the Treaty passed, with some considerable collateral
damage to Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. Got to say, I didn't
see that one coming. And Gary Gibbons in his piece on Channel 4 News
afterwards opined that generally it was thought that the referendum
would be passed in Ireland. Still, here's an insight into how the rest
of Europe may be thinking, and indeed something to put our own
concerns into perspective. When asked was T. Blair still in line for
the job of President he demurred, suggesting that Blair might not be
interested unless it were handed on a plate. Indeed he proposed that
there was one name seriously in the picture. And that name?

Why step forward Bertie Ahern! An expectant Europe expects you to do your duty…

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/the-necessity-for-eu-enlargement-or-its-a-great-idea-in-practice-just-how-will-it-work-in-theory/
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