The European Union is faced with a difficult decision. If it doesn't allow Turkey to join the EU, it could be viewed as further proof of the "clash" between the Muslim world and the west. If it does allow Turkey to join, it faces a potential wave of immigrants that people aren't ready for or fully accepting. And, with open borders and Turkey's neighbors, obvious security concerns.
Europeans praise themselves for their ability to overcome the past, by creating things like a European Defense Agency 90 years after World War I and only 15 years after the fall of Communism. But to turn its attention away from overcoming centuries of exclusion and battles against the Muslim world and the Turks would be to ignore a much more pressing issue.
International Herald Tribune -Is EU ready for Turkey? Muslim world is waiting
Roger Cohen: Is EU ready for Turkey? Muslim world is waiting
Roger Cohen International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Globalist
ISTANBUL
Where Europe ends, and with it presumably the European Union, has long been a vexed question. Just how vexed will be demonstrated over the next seven months as the EU grapples with a critical decision: whether to begin negotiations leading to Turkish membership.
The EU has just admitted 10 new members without being sure how it will run itself as a 25-member club. So the notion of opening the way for Turkey appears far-fetched. This is a country of close to 70 million people, the vast majority of them Muslims, bordering Iraq, Syria and Iran. Few Europeans associate such dangerous borders with their continent.
But Turkey amounts to a special case. Its links with the EU go back to 1963, when it entered into economic agreements. Ever since, the prospect of possible membership has been dangled with growing specificity before this diverse and determinedly secular state. Now the EU Commission is completing a report on Turkey that will form the basis for a decision by European leaders in December.
The looming verdict will provoke sharp divisions. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, recently expressed strong support for Turkish membership, saying it would bring a "new dimension" to the EU. The German government also appears favorable. But Alain Juppé of France, the leader of President Jacques Chirac's UMP party, said last month that his party opposed opening negotiations with Turkey. Chirac himself has been more evasive, saying Turkey has a "European vocation." Make of that Delphic phrase what you will.
Scrutiny of the EU's next move is intense in the United States, in the Islamic world and in Turkey itself. The American view is straightforward. Europe says it wants good relations with Muslims. That being the case, it cannot slam the door on Turkey.
"If the Muslim world is not an enemy, they have to go through with this," said one American official.
The American idea, of course, is that Turkey's natural role is as a bridge between the West and the Islamic world at a time when suspicion and anger are growing over Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To open talks leading to EU membership would sweep away suspicions of religious and cultural prejudice that have grown as Turkey has waited on the sidelines for four decades. It would show that a Muslim country that is also a secular democracy has its place at the same European table as France, Britain and Germany.
Support for EU membership is strong in Turkey. Saban Disli, the vice-chairman of the governing Justice and Development Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that negotiations should begin in the first half of next year with a view to bringing Turkey into the EU by 2008, or 2010 at the latest.
"If Turkey is left out, close to 1.5 billion Muslims around the world will feel as bad as I will feel," he said. "The clash between Islam and the West will be sharpened."
Erdogan, who leads a party with Islamic roots that some now refer to as "Muslim Democrats" (an echo of Europe's right-of-center Christian Democrats), has worked hard to persuade European leaders that Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is now ready. Just last week, special state security courts sometimes used to try Kurds were abolished, one of a series of amendments to the Constitution.
In general, the army has lost its once dominant behind-the-scenes role; the often trampled rights of Turkey's minority Kurdish population have been bolstered. Erdogan has also pushed hard to reunite the divided island of Cyprus through support for a United Nations peace plan that was rejected last month by Greek Cypriots.
In all this, he has shown himself responsive to European and American prodding. Colin Powell, the American secretary of state, wrote to the Turkish government in February, urging it to do more for judicial transparency. This month, he called Turkey a "very, very secular democracy" (after causing ire earlier by mistakenly labeling it an "Islamic republic").
But resistance to Turkey in Europe remains strong. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and overseer of efforts to draft a new EU constitution, declared in 2002 that Turkey's entry would mean "the end of Europe." Such views are widely shared, if seldom expressed so directly.
Turkey resides somewhere deep and ambivalent in the European psyche. It was against the westward pushing forces of the Ottoman empire and Islam that Europe long fought. The Ottoman army at the gates of Vienna, the centuries-long battle to put an end to Turkey-in-Europe - these events were marking.
The mingled minarets and church steeples of Bosnia are only the most obvious imprint of the Turkish presence.
Today, that presence is felt most immediately in the large number of Turkish immigrants in the EU, particularly in Germany. The specter of hordes of young Turks moving west troubles many people. Europe remains uncertain about how to integrate its growing Muslim population. The notion of the EU as some sort of Christian club has not been entirely lost. In such a club, of course, Turkey does not fit.
So, many Turks are skeptical. "Turkey is a big thing to swallow," said Lerzan Ozkale, a university professor. "I think the EU prefers us cooperating on the outside." Up to now, it is true, the EU has done well by tantalizing Turkey without admitting it.
But that game now looks exhausted. Turkey is impatient; a world of tensions between Islam and the West is watching. The country has much to offer the EU: its understanding of the Islamic world, its vitality, its large army, its geographic bridge.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Green politician, spoke this month of the EU as a land of "miracles." The first two were Franco-German reconciliation and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The third, he suggested, could be Europe's rapprochement with the Muslim world through Turkish membership. He had a point. To close the EU to Turkey would be to look backward at a time when a troubling future must be confronted.
The Tories (and however many Britons don't want to be in the "centre of Europeand decision-making", as Tony Blair put it) can turn to Switzerland and Norway for reasons why it's not necessary to join the EU.
The Swiss are prosperous and content with its relationship with the EU, its major trade partner. NOrway, as this Telegraph article points out, has grown twice as much as the UK in the last 30 years.
They don't have to deal with their business being over-regulated, they don't have to deal with the burden of rebuilding Eastern European countries like Poland and the Czech Republic and they don't have to balance what some consider the teetering weight of 25 member-nations.
Telegraph - 'The EU? It's political suicide to mention it in Switzerland'
'The EU? It's political suicide to mention it in Switzerland'
(Filed: 08/05/2004)
Last week, the European Trade Commissioner had a grim warning for Britain: if we vote against the EU constitution in the forthcoming referendum, we could end up like... Switzerland. Graham Turner asked the Swiss exactly what this would mean
Lack a day! Lack a day! News that the British might actually be allowed a say on the EU constitution has brought predictable auguries of doom and woe from the Euro-federalist brigade. Should Britain vote No, it would become no more than an impotent shadow on the margins of Europe - relegated to the "rearguard" of its nations, according to Pascal Lamy, the Brussels Small Trade Commissioner.
Others of the same ilk hinted darkly that Britain might even be forced to leave the EU. At the very least, declared Mr Lamy last week, we would end up like Switzerland.
All of this, not surprisingly, provoked a certain amount of discreet mirth in both Switzerland and Norway, which happen to be the richest countries in Europe. Both have only an arm's-length relationship with the EU. Both have prospered exceedingly; Norway, for instance, has grown twice as fast as Britain over the past 30 years. Neither looks likely to join the EU for some considerable time.
In Switzerland, the EU is definitely on the backburner. "You should know," said Professor Franz Jaeger, who was a member of the Swiss National Council (their equivalent of our House of Commons) for 24 years, "that for the next 15 years at least, you will not be able to convince the Swiss to enter the EU. We just don't need it."
Nor is the professor's timescale by any means the longest on offer. "I was asked to speak at the 350th anniversary of the Treaty of Westphalia, which created Swiss neutrality," recalled Dr Hugo Butler, chief editor of the prestigious Neue Zuricher Zeitung, a paper that is broadly in favour of membership, "and I said that, if the EU develops well and is able to guarantee the sort of freedoms we have, then in 50 years' time, maybe the Swiss will join."
Others are thinking in the same sort of timeframe, though they wonder whether the EU will still be there to join. Michel Dérobert, general secretary of the Swiss Private Bankers Federation, felt that the Swiss probably would become members in 50 years' time - "just before the EU finally disappears."
Klaus Wellershoff, chief economist of the Union Bank of Switzerland - the largest wealth managers in the world, with £800 billion of client assets under their wings - also thinks Swiss membership extremely unlikely in the foreseeable future. "It's way out there," he declared, "if at all."
The issue is so dead that the prudent prefer not to speak its name. "It is now political suicide to mention the EU," said Jean-Jacques Roth, chief editor of Le Temps in Geneva. "No one would dare to take the issue out of the box."
Even the so-called Euroturbos, who two years ago launched a campaign for negotiations with Brussels to begin immediately, confess to having been struck dumb since 75 per cent of the Swiss turned them down in a referendum. "We were completely wiped out," admitted Professor Peter Tschopp, professor of economics at Geneva University and himself a leading Euroturbo. "We don't dare to say anything any more."
Many Swiss are convinced that the EU is more likely to change than they are. "Within 15 years," declared Beat Kappeler, a distinguished columnist, "the EU will have become a free trade area, and then there will be no problem for us to enter."
"I know the people in Brussels," said Robert Nef, president of the Liberal Institute in Zurich, "and they are already afraid of the high degree of complexity they have. They admit privately that even more complexity - now that the 10 East European countries have joined - could result in a disaster."
Even Europhiles believe that if the extension into Eastern Europe is not handled well, the EU could collapse altogether. "If I am honest with myself," said Peter Tschopp, "I think there is a 50-50 chance of the whole thing imploding. I may be considered a Euroturbo, but I was not in favour of this extension. The Marshall Plan will be nothing compared with the job of rebuilding these countries. The Czech Republic, for example, may look nice but, inside, it is just painted ruins. Somebody will have to pay for all that."
"The whole thing is getting too big," agreed Theo Phyl, a mountain farmer in central Switzerland. "It was like that in Russia. They became too big and then collapsed. I think it'll be the same with the EU."
So, the Swiss have settled for the kind of semi-detached relationship that many people in Britain would prefer: a series of bilateral deals with the EU - easily their largest trading partner - which ensures the free movement of goods, capital and labour as well as common security arrangements. So far, they have made no financial contribution whatsoever to the EU. They have retained their own political system, currency, tax regime and labour market laws.
The only downside, so far as the majority are concerned, is having to accept many EU regulations which they have had no part in shaping. It is, they think, a small price to pay. "When you are organising a free market," said Franz Steinegger, a leading Christian Democrat MP, "you have to accept the regulations of the bigger one."
The fact that Cristoph Blocher's Swiss People's Party made the greatest gains in last year's elections on a platform of total opposition to EU membership has only confirmed the prevailing mood.
So how, and why, have the Swiss arrived at such definite conclusions? They are, after all, notoriously slow in coming to judgment - and joined the United Nations, for example, only after decades of hesitation. (The Swiss themselves tell the story of the man from Zurich who took a walk with a friend from Berne. The man from Berne trod on a snail. "Why on earth did you do that?," asked the Zuricher. "I couldn't help it," his friend replied; "he was overtaking me on the inside").
To begin with, the Swiss want to keep the EU at arm's length because, in many ways, their political system is the exact opposite of the Union's. While the EU has a massive democratic deficit, Switzerland has an equally massive democratic surplus. Whereas we in Britain have what Lord Hailsham called "elective dictatorship," the Swiss have direct democracy. They vote about anything and everything, at national and local level. And their ardour for the polling booth leaves foreigners utterly bewildered. "They are voting all the time," murmured a German pastor who works in Winterthur. "I just can't keep up with it all."
There have been no fewer than 46 national referendums in the past four years. The Swiss voted on whether to cut working hours, and turned the idea down. They voted on whether to have minimum national holidays of four weeks - and turned that down, too, because they could not see why such things needed to be set in stone. In a fortnight's time, they will even vote on their finance minister's tax proposals. It is as if Gordon Brown's Budget had to be ratified by the people.
All it takes to call a national referendum is 50,000 signatures gathered within 100 days of a new law being proposed.
Much the same applies in each of Switzerland's 26 cantons. "When a new law is proposed here," explained Josias Clavadetscher, editor of the biggest local paper in the canton of Schwyz, "people are given two months in which to collect 2,000 signatures - we only have a population of 130,000. And if people vote in the referendum against the law, it is thrown into the rubbish bin. The number of signatures required depends on the population of the canton.
"In 2002, for example, the cantonal administration said they wanted to build a new, very modern prison at a cost of 35 million Swiss francs (£15.5 million). The previous estimate had been 25 million francs. So people launched a referendum and decided that they didn't want such a luxurious prison for criminals in our canton. Now, the government has to come up with new proposals."
At communal level, similar rules apply. "In my community," said David Syz, Switzerland's secretary of state for economic affairs, "we have 4,000 people, and they decide what the local tax rate for the next year will be. There is usually a meeting of about 200 citizens in the town hall. They look at the budget which the administration has put up and then they say: 'We don't want either the new school or the 10 new roundabouts you're proposing, so forget them."
What would happen in Switzerland, I wondered, if they had been members of the EU and had been told - as Tony Blair told Britain until his recent U-turn - that they would not be allowed to vote on the new EU constitution? "It could not possibly happen in this country," said Theo Phyl, the mountain farmer. "If it did, the Swiss would demonstrate en masse and the prime minister would be fired. Poodle [Tony Blair's nickname in much of Switzerland] would simply have had to go."
For most Swiss, the idea of giving up this profoundly democratic system in exchange for a stream of mandatory directives from Brussels is simply unthinkable. "I see no chance that Swiss people will accept less power," said Michel Dérobert, "because they do not want to lose the right to have the final say. There is not going to be less democracy in this country; in fact, we are going to have more because the Swiss like it."
"We want to preserve our very democratic system," agreed Jean Bouregois, director of the Swiss Farmers Union. "Much more decisive than anything which might happen to farming if we joined the EU is a general belief that we have a political system which is sacred to us - and that it would not be possible to keep that system in the EU as it stands today."
"Just take VAT," said Lutzi Stamm, a Swiss People's Party MP. "The second we joined the EU, we would have to increase it from our present 7.6 per cent to at least 15 per cent. You could collect a million votes, never mind 50,000, and you still would not be able to bring it down even to 14.9. That is the opposite of direct democracy."
Indeed, the Swiss have no intention of sacrificing any part of their unique political system, whose aim is to disperse power rather than concentrating it in any one individual or party. They have no prime minister. Their president holds office only for a year. Very few can even tell you who he is. As for their "cabinet", the Federal Council is made up of seven representatives from the four main parties. And their job is to come up with an all-party compromise on every issue.
The Swiss have what Robert Nef calls "a strong anti-leadership instinct". They do not like big figures. Big figures, they feel, can make big mistakes - so a Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair would be inconceivable in Switzerland. I asked Hansrudolf Kamer, the deputy chief editor of the Neue Zuricher Zeitung, whether the Swiss wanted leadership. "No," he replied flatly.
"Even the president is not the leader of the government," said David Syz. "The members of the Federal Council are widely respected, but they ought not to appear on the media too often because people would not like it. We have a culture that does not want prima donnas.''
"The seven have to argue as a collective" agreed Robert Nef. "If an individual politician, such as Tony Blair, were to say, 'Trust me!', people here would feel there was something very wrong. That would be altogether too personal."
In Switzerland, the citizen really is king. "We elect our parliamentarians," Nef went on, "not to have a policy, not to have a programme, but to frame laws which we, the people, can then challenge and, if necessary, repeal through a referendum. The citizen rules the state and not vice-versa." In Switzerland, remarked Hugo Butler, it was the people who were Her Majesty's Opposition.
This belief in the primacy of the people is one reason why the EU's sometimes high-handed behaviour has gone down so badly. "The first thing we didn't like," said Edouard Brunner, a former secretary of state for foreign affairs and ambassador in both Washington and Paris, "was the way Chirac treated the Haider question in Austria, trying to put him in quarantine and making a pariah of the whole country. We are not particularly fond of Haider, but he had been elected by the people.
"The second was Chirac's remark to the Poles after they had signed a letter, along with others, supporting the US and Britain in the Iraq war. Chirac told them that if they wanted to join the EU, that was not a particularly clever thing to do. Well, we don't want to be dictated to in that way."
The Swiss put an almost equally high value on their economic freedoms. Their taxes are lower than the EU's, and money is much cheaper. "Our interest rates," said Beat Kappeler, "are about half theirs and our mortgage rate is only three per cent compared with six per cent or more in the EU. In many cantons, there are no inheritance taxes."
When the Swiss held a referendum on bank secrecy, no less than 80 per cent of the public voted in favour. It is not only foreign investors who like their privacy.
The country is also blessedly free of Brussels's red tape. There is little support for a 35-hour week here. "The Swiss," Kappeler went on, "work an average of 41.5 hours a week, and there are more of them still working at the age of 64 than in any other country. They actually like work.
"If you're an entrepreneur, what's more, you don't ask if you want to make a change - you just do it. You pay the wages you want, according to people's performance. You can hire and fire at very short notice for economic reasons, without judges intervening as they would in France or Germany. There's also very little in the way of worker participation. So we have all the advantages of being in a common market, without any of the disadvantages."
Taxes, both local and corporate, are held down by fierce competition between cantons. "If you take the average tax level as 100," said Hugo Butler, "it is around 50 in the canton of Zug and 144 in Graubunden. So businesses and individuals can always threaten to move. Without that competition, taxes would undoubtedly rise - and there's no doubt that, if we were in the EU, Brussels would be pressing for them to be the same everywhere." The result is that, while France and Germany wallow in recession, Switzerland has survived remarkably well.
For the past 15 years," said Klaus Wellershoff, "our growth rate has been rather dismal; and unemployment is rising somewhat, though, at four per cent, it is still fabulously low compared with places like Germany. We've also kept a remarkable stability in prices - they've only gone up between zero and one per cent a year for the last decade.
"As for income per head, it is still among the highest in the world. Just look at the cars in this city: BMWs, Mercs, Jaguars. Their average age is very low and a lot of them are brand new. We are still doing excellently and the bank is rather optimistic about the future."
"Everywhere in Switzerland is flourishing," agreed Hugo Butler. "You will find wealthy people wherever you go. There are no suburbs with only the poor living in them. We have difficulties - prices are far higher than in France or Germany - but they are the problems of a country with a very high standard of living." This is what Jean-Jacques Roth of Le Matin, describes as "une crise de luxe." Had Switzerland been in the EU, said Butler's deputy, Hansrudolf Kamer, who is in favour of membership, "we would definitely be worse off - far more regulations, higher taxes, higher interest rates."
For the moment, then, the Swiss are very happy to keep the EU at a distance. If the Union asks them to stump up to help meet its expenses in Eastern Europe, they will say that they are willing to contribute - but only directly to the country concerned. They will not put a single franc into the EU's common pot. "We never know what happens to that common pot," said Edouard Brunner.
"We do not," declared Ueli Maurer, "want to be a colony of a government somewhere in Brussels which decides what happens here in Switzerland." Perhaps the Swiss, slow though they are, are the ones who have got it right.
Very brief and clear introduction by the BBC to the ideas in the draft of EU Constitution. I found it useful, as I didn't really know all these issues before. Take a look...
It's an interactive page on the BBC
This article by Roger Cohen, on The New York Times' Week in Review of Sunday, May 2nd, explains the changing attitudes of the US towards "Europe at 25".
'WHOLE AND FREE' AT LAST
By ROGER COHEN
WASHINGTON — The expansion of the European Union this weekend from 15 members to 25, marking the formal end of Europe's postwar division, presents America with a choice. Should it embrace this new union that stretches to the Russian border or try to foster Europe's many fissures in order to divide and rule?
For the moment, there is scant official comment, but perhaps Europe should not take this personally. The United States has shifted paradigms: Europe is old news. Still, the less-than-benign neglect surrounding the European Union's addition of 10 members, 8 of them once part of the Soviet bloc, reflects a moment of great difficulty.
"The situation has never been so bad in 50 years," Gunter Burghardt, the union's ambassador in Washington, said in an interview. "It is a fact of life that America is a hegemonic power, but the question is how that power is used. We need to know that America is open to a confident relationship, not just with certain member states but with the E.U. as such."
This assessment reflects the enduring wounds of the Iraq war and the feeling among many European officials that an American administration has determined that its interests may lie more in division within Europe than in unity, more in forging improvised coalitions of the willing than in honoring a partnership of the wedded.
"This is an administration that simply does not care about Europe," said Philip H. Gordon, an expert on European affairs at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think they do anything solely to divide Europe, but if that's a consequence of an action, fine, because they don't want a counterweight to American power emerging."
In many respects, the new European Union is a potential major power. Its highly educated population of 455 million people is far larger than America's and it accounts for 28 percent of world trade.
But it is also divided between formerly Communist states in Central Europe that are enthusiastic about Atlanticism, and other countries, led by France, where dislike of President Bush's America is intense. This is the basic ideological split that America could choose to quicken or quiet.
America might, for example, try to use the sympathies of Poland, Slovakia or Hungary to undermine European unity and pursue its own goals, which may include the establishment of military bases in at least one of these countries, quiet attempts to assure that Europe's military identity remains muted or the obstruction of moves toward a more federal United States of Europe.
But Iraq has been a sobering experience, and American officials seem, for now, to have dropped talk of "old" and "new" Europe in favor of a rediscovered pragmatism.
"Whatever the differences over the past year, we know that a Europe that is open, at peace, broadly united and reaching out toward Turkey is in the American interest," one State Department official said.
The mention of Turkey is significant. Faced by the union's expansion, many Americans respond by asking why Turkey is not included.
The question, of course, reflects America's shift from a focus on uniting Europe to the overriding quest to change the Middle East. Admitting Turkey, a Muslim country, to a core institution of the West like the European Union would, in the American view, provide an important example of bridge building to the Islamic world. It is therefore vital, American officials argue, that the union decide at the end of this year to begin negotiations on membership.
But the impatience over bringing Turkey into Europe also betrays enduring American misunderstanding over the nature of the European Union. The immense complexity and cost of offering membership to a country as big and poor as Turkey are not widely appreciated here.
The extent of integration within the union, and the surrender of sovereignty involved, are blurry ideas in America, perhaps because the notion of such transnational merging is anathema to a country at or close to the apogee of its power. If America, Mexico and Canada were as integrated as Europe's states, it would be possible to have a Mexican in Ottawa setting United States interest rates. But that, of course, is unthinkable.
This European indivisibility, despite all the continent's difficulties, makes it inevitable that new members like Poland will tend to seek shared European positions, whatever their strong American sympathies.
At the same time, these institutional differences complicate trans-Atlantic understanding because a sovereign America run by an administration for which power is the coin of the realm faces European states that have put their faith in international institutions like the European Union or the United Nations or an international criminal court.
But a lot is at stake in trying to overcome the current crisis of confidence. Between them, the European Union and the United States account for 40 percent of world trade. They are each other's largest trading partners. Business transactions between them run at close to $3 billion a day.
This web of economic interests is so rich that it tends to compel a quest to resolve differences and harmonize regulations. The problem is that, in the strategic area, the common purpose that long drove America's broad support of European unity - delivering stability to a continent with a debilitating penchant for war - has been lost.
It is not delight but some dismay that is accompanying the arrival of the Europe "whole and free" sought by the elder George Bush and reiterated as an objective by President Bush, who said in Warsaw in June 2001 that "our goal is to erase the false lines that have divided Europe for too long."
Europe has worked hard on eliminating those divisions. But Mr. Burghardt believes recognition of this is scant in an America whose attention has moved elsewhere."The E.U. delivered on Nov. 9, that is the fall of the Berlin Wall," he said. "But we got hit by the geopolitical earthquake of Sept. 11." In other words, 9/11 trumped 11/9.
In his Warsaw speech three months before Sept. 11, President Bush also said something else: "When Europe and America are divided, history tends to tragedy."
The fate of a little grocery in Budapest is a symbol of anxious times as the EU grows.
By András Szántó on the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, May 2nd.
NEW YORK — The little grocery shop in the building where I grew up in Budapest closed Friday. A trivial event, perhaps, but one connected to momentous transformations in Hungary.
On Saturday, Hungary became one of the 10 new members of the European Union. The shop's owners couldn't afford the upgrades needed for "Euro-conformity," including separate freezers for meat and dairy and a new bathroom with a shower for the staff, whose size would have to double. So, they decided to shut it down.
Such are the trade-offs of EU membership, and they point to why so many Hungarians are uneasy about joining "Europe."
As every tourist knows, you can tell a lot about a country by visiting its food shops. The little grocery at No. 27 Veres Pálné utca has been a barometer of Hungary's evolution through the decade and a half since the fall of communism.
It opened before the big changes, during an early wave of private enterprise creation. The undercapitalized business pioneers of the late 1980s were shopkeepers and taxi drivers — people long on ambition and short on cash — who could get by on little more than sweat equity.
As trade opened up with the world after 1989, the shop saw many changes. Exotic fruits, unfamiliar cheeses and fine wines filled its shelves. One by one, familiar Hungarian brands were replaced by Western ones, or they reappeared in prettier packaging — and at higher prices.
In recent years, as its surrounding buildings were renovated from bullet-pocked half-ruins into elegant, pale-yellow apartment houses, the grocery shop became an anachronism. The storekeeper still knew you by name, and she would even make change for the new, high-tech parking meters lining the street. But the place seemed shabby and a little dirty, a remnant of a bygone world that Hungary, or at least the downtown street where the grocery was located, had nearly left behind.
Now it's over — or rather, it's finally beginning. The pale blue flag of the European Union has been ceremonially planted in the Budapest parliament adjacent to a Hungarian flag that has seldom stood alone in the last century — its serial cohabitation with the Austrian, German and Soviet flags marking the usually tragic compromises Hungary has made to prosper, or to survive.
Which is why you don't hear the sounds of rejoicing in the streets, even though the country is finally getting what it has yearned for: "a place at the table," "club membership in the civilized world," the chance "to take our place where we rightly belong" — to quote the clichés that for decades have echoed in the coffeehouses and the newspaper pages of Budapest.
There is something ironic about a nation that has struggled with mighty powers for so long, only to willingly throw itself into a multinational mega-state whose affairs are organized in capitals of other countries. When I asked a friend, who is a member of the Hungarian parliament, whether his colleagues were prepared for what it meant to follow directives from Brussels, he simply answered, "We have no idea."
The long-term consequences of the big bet on Europe will take years to play out. All signs indicate that although Eastern Europeans came late to the party, they are likely to profit from it. Meantime in Hungary, where you can still find street signs from the communist years crossed out with red paint, the changeover is the latest in a series of Tarzan-like leaps toward what, one can only hope, is a more promising future.
Until then, the transition to EU membership will boil down to little daily adjustments. They say the price of milk will plummet as Slovak dairy farmers flood the market, but the price of sugar may skyrocket as Hungarian producers go bust. You may look in vain for the chocolate bar that you've loved since you were a kid, but you'll be able to fly to London on a discount airline for the cost of a restaurant meal. And for those lamenting the loss of the little grocery in Veres Pálné utca, a shiny, clean, Euro-conforming supermarket is opening down the street.
(András Szántó is deputy director of the national arts journalism program at Columbia University)
This is an article on how the French perceive the American view of the enlargement... Mixed feelings. The basic idea is that Washington hopes the new members will make the EU more pro-american. Some neocons, though, believe that a bigger Europe will slowly drift away, and be more independent.
According to a European observer in Washington, the Americans "don't understand the European Union." It looks too much like NATO. Anyway, they are too busy dealing with Iraq and the coming presidential election.
Le MOnde - L'Amérique espère que l'Union à 25 penchera du côté de la "nouvelle Europe"
L'Amérique espère que l'Union à 25 penchera du côté de la "nouvelle Europe"
LE MONDE | 28.04.04 | 14h28
A Washington, on compte sur les dix Etats adhérents pour "atlanticiser" l'UE. A l'inverse, certains "néoconservateurs" craignent que celle-ci ne s'éloigne, avec le temps, des Etats-Unis.
Washington de notre correspondant
S'ils n'étaient pas accaparés par l'Irak, le Proche-Orient et l'élection présidentielle de novembre, les responsables américains s'intéresseraient sûrement à l'entrée de dix nouveaux pays dans l'Union européenne. Mais, dans le contexte des dernières semaines, l'événement a les plus grandes chances de passer inaperçu outre-Atlantique, même si la délégation de l'UE à Washington a été contactée par plusieurs magazines à la recherche d'informations sur la "nouvelle Europe".
Pourtant, vu de la capitale américaine, l'élargissement est favorable aux intérêts des Etats-Unis. "Traditionnellement, nous soutenons l'extension de l'UE", rappelle Philip Gordon, un ancien de l'administration Clinton qui dirige le Centre d'études sur les Etats-Unis et l'Europe à la Brookings Institution, un des grands think tanks (groupes de réflexion) de Washington. "Les nouveaux membres modernisent leurs économies sans que cela ne nous coûte rien, explique-t-il. Les mauvais côtés - fonds structurels, problèmes d'immigration - ne sont pas pour nous. Et nous pouvons espérer que l'élargissement aura pour effet d'"atlanticiser" l'UE." Jacqueline Grapin, qui préside l'Institut européen de Washington, confirme que les Etats-Unis "comptent beaucoup sur la "nouvelle Europe" pour garder l'UE dans le giron américain".
L'expression "nouvelle Europe" a été lancée par Donald Rumsfeld, secrétaire américain à la défense, en janvier 2003. Au plus fort de l'opposition de la France et de l'Allemagne aux visées de George Bush sur l'Irak, M. Rumsfeld avait qualifié ces deux nations de "vieille Europe" et fait l'éloge des pays d'Europe centrale et orientale, en instance d'intégration dans l'UE et qui, eux, soutenaient Washington. Jacques Chirac avait répondu que ces pays avaient "perdu une occasion de se taire" en prenant position pour les Etats-Unis.
Fin mai 2003, à Cracovie (Pologne), M. Bush s'était insurgé contre les propos du président français. Ces pays n'ont pas fait tout ce chemin, à travers occupations, dictatures et révoltes, pour s'entendre dire qu'ils devaient "choisir, maintenant, entre l'Europe et l'Amérique", avait déclaré le chef de la Maison Blanche.
Cinq des nouveaux membres - l'Estonie, la Lettonie, la Lituanie, la Slovaquie et la Slovénie - ont été accueillis en grande pompe, le 29 mars, à Washington, dans les rangs de l'OTAN, un mois avant leur intégration dans l'UE. La Hongrie, la Pologne et la République tchèque font partie de l'Alliance depuis 1999. Les Etats-Unis font déjà campagne pour que la Bulgarie et la Roumanie, les deux autres nouveaux partenaires de l'OTAN, soient admises, à leur tour, dans l'UE. "Pour les Américains, l'UE, c'est un peu comme l'OTAN. Ils ne comprennent pas ce que signifie l'Union européenne", estime Mme Grapin. Certains, pourtant, s'inquiètent. Marian Tupy, un économiste slovaque qui suit les questions européennes au Cato Institute, fondation ultralibérale, raille les néoconservateurs de l'American Enterprise Institute, pour qui, dit-il, "tout ce qui renforce l'Europe est mauvais pour l'Amérique". En fait, les avis sont partagés. Certains font le pari que, plus l'UE s'étend, moins elle s'approfondit, et que cela complique la formation d'un contrepoids politique à la puissance américaine. D'autres estiment, au contraire, que l'élargissement ne peut qu'accroître la puissance européenne, et que les nouveaux adhérents, pour atlantistes qu'ils soient aujourd'hui, s'éloigneront inévitablement, avec le temps, de Washington.
Aux yeux de Jacqueline Grapin, c'est là une "position intellectuelle". Pour le moment, la réalité est que les pays d'Europe centrale et orientale "sont proches des Etats-Unis" et comptent sur eux pour leur sécurité, face à une Russie dont ils ont peur. Ils n'entreront donc jamais dans une stratégie qui aurait pour effet d'affaiblir l'Amérique. Aussi un responsable du département d'Etat peut-il affirmer, dans un entretien officieux, que les Etats-Unis considèrent l'Union européenne élargie comme leur "partenaire primaire" et n'ont "pas le moindre désaccord avec son existence"...
"Plus d'Europe ne signifie pas moins d'Etats-Unis", a assuré Anthony Wayne, un des adjoints du secrétaire d'Etat, dans un discours prononcé à Graz (Autriche), le 2 avril, au sujet de l'élargissement. Ce jugement, pourtant, ne se vérifie pas à 100 %. Ainsi, Washington s'est efforcé d'obtenir des nouveaux membres qu'ils signent, au préalable, des accords afin d'exempter les Américains de poursuites éventuelles devant la Cour pénale internationale (CPI). L'échec a été complet. Plus facile : l'application par ces pays du tarif extérieur commun et de la politique agricole commune aura des conséquences pour les exportateurs américains, qui demandent des compensations à l'UE. Ils devraient les obtenir.
Patrick Jarreau
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 29.04.04
A few days before the crucial birth-day of the EU enlargement (May 1), the Greek population of Cyprus voted against the "fusion" with the Turkish side of the island. By this, they basically excluded the Turkish Cyprus from the European Union. Paradoxically, this ended up approaching the Cyprian Turkish people to Europe (EU foreign ministers decided to help the Turkish side with 259 million Euros, and a partial suspension of the embargo).
Tomorrow, Le Monde will publish a special 20-page issue ("L'Europe, un continent neuf") dedicated to the enlargement. I hope it will be available online.
For us, the "old" Europeans, all this is a big deal. Can you imagine? 25 members, 188 regions, 450 million citizens, and 20 languages...
Being a "European citizen" is much more exiting than being just an Italian one!
European's know their common cultural past, but they ignore each other's contemporary artists and intellectuals, writes Alan Riding who adds: "As Europe moves toward "ever closer union," unless it also communicates culturally, popular taste will become ever more American."
The article mentions a number of limited efforts, explaining that they are unsuccessful, while failing to underline that they are numerous. This could be an excellent image of what we are seeing in other fields: myriads of small things contributing unsatisfactorily to a greater integration because they pale in comparison to the idea of Europe. These perceptions are not incompatible, and we should learn to deal with them if we want to better understand what's really happening.
The New York Times - A Common Culture (From the U.S.A.) Binds Europeans Ever Closer
A Common Culture (From the U.S.A.) Binds Europeans Ever Closer
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, April 22 — As 10 new countries prepare to enter the European Union on May 1, it is not so much economic weight or political tradition that has earned them the right to join the regional bloc. Rather, it is a certain cultural identity forged by Christianity and a common artistic heritage. In one crucial sense, then, the lingua franca of this expanded Europe remains that of Shakespeare, Leonardo, Mozart and other giants of the past.
Turn to the contemporary arts, however, and a different picture emerges. Here the union's old and new members alike know surprisingly little about one another's artistic inventiveness today. Creative life may be flourishing in widely different ways across Europe, but the most common cultural link across the region now is a devotion to American popular culture in the form of movies, television and music. In a Europe committed to seeking "ever closer union," where a dozen countries already share a currency, culture seems to have fallen out of step. Even as Europeans visit one another's cities and beaches more than ever, national self-obsessions prevail in the visual arts, new plays, literature, contemporary classical music, pop music and movies.
Does this lack of cohesion matter? Is it not enough for European culture to be sustained by the masters of the Italian Renaissance, the Spanish Golden Age and French Impressionism, by composers from Bach to Janacek, by writers of the stature of Cervantes, Goethe and Voltaire, by thinkers like Erasmus, Locke and Hegel? In their day these heavyweights also had only elitist audiences.
Since World War II, however, has come the massification of culture. In response Europeans have tried to reinforce national and regional identities, to hold onto their languages, foods and folkloric traditions. But given the option of American-style entertainment, they show little interest in one another's arts. It may simply be lack of information: European newspapers offer poor coverage of their neighbors' art scenes, and television is not much better, with the exception of the French-German network Arte. Whatever the reason, artistic endeavors that do cross borders today reach few people.
In movies European artists know whom to blame. The region's movie industries constantly bemoan the power of Hollywood, which for the most part leaves local films less than 15 percent of the box office even in cinephile countries like Italy and Germany. France in turn uses Hollywood to justify generous government subsidies and other privileges that enable its movie industry to control about one-third of the local market.
Yet three decades after the wellsprings of Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut, Europeans now rarely choose to see one another's films. In 2002, a good year for French cinema, 50 percent of the box office went to American movies and 35 percent to French movies, but only 4.9 percent to British films, 0.8 percent to German and 0.2 percent to Italian. And in Spain last year, Hollywood had 67 percent of the movie market, Spain 15.8 percent, Britain 5.7 percent, France 2.6 percent and Germany just 1.2 percent.
The failure of Europe's contemporary arts to enter the mainstream may help explain the plethora of the more rarefied arts festivals in the region, not only the film jamborees of Cannes, Venice and Berlin but also myriad dance and music festivals. (Dance and music, not requiring words, are more exportable.) Similarly summer theater festivals in Edinburgh and Avignon, France, invite productions from throughout Europe, yet few shows that are not local become commercial hits. In 1996 Yasmina Reza's "Art" was the first play by a living French writer to reach London's West End in 40 years.
Organizations like the British Council, the French Association for Artistic Action, Germany's Goethe Institute and Spain's Cervantes Institute actively promote their countries' cultures. And Europe's performing arts can be seen at, say, the Barbican Center in London, the Centro Cultural de Belêm, Lisbon, and the Théâtre National de l'Odéon in Paris. Yet these efforts touch a minority.
The visual arts are a case in point. Europe's museums may be crowded, yet many Europeans would struggle to name the leading living artists of France (Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Sophie Calle) or Spain (Antoni Tàpies, Miquel Barceló) or Germany (Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer). Even Lucian Freud, generally considered Britain's greatest living painter, speaks little to Continental Europeans.
Many Britons have at least heard of their own Y.B.A.'s — Young British Artists — because of clever marketing by the collector Charles Saatchi. Yet Damien Hirst of dissected shark renown and Tracey Emin of the "slept-in" love bed have become household names in Britain more as "enfants terribles" than as artists.
In the case of books, "Harry Potter" is everywhere, but best-seller lists in Europe are generally dominated by national authors. A few have a European audience, like Italy's Umberto Eco, Germany's Günter Grass and recently Spain's Carlos Ruiz Zafón, whose "Shadow of the Wind" comes out in English this month. But most nonnational best sellers come from popular American writers, currently Dan Brown with "The Da Vinci Code," but also frequently John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell or recently Michael Moore.
American and British writing clearly profits from the English language: European publishers can read books in English, while those in other languages must usually be translated before being judged.
More surprisingly, while modeled after American "sound," even European pop music rarely crosses the region's borders, as if Europeans were accustomed to lyrics in English but not in other languages. The Rolling Stones can fill stadiums across the region, but no other European rock group could do so outside its own country. And France's undying love for its aging rock star Johnny Hallyday still mystifies other Europeans.
Does this separateness matter? Perhaps it represents the cultural diversity that Europeans continue to covet. Yet if Europeans remain focused on the riches of the past and ignore one another's contemporary work, there may also be a price. As Europe moves toward "ever closer union," unless it also communicates culturally, popular taste will become ever more American.
TRIESTE, Italy – From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together. The Romans walloped their neighbors. Catholics and Protestants shared God but couldn't agree on much else. The French and British irritated each other nonstop. And that was before the world wars and genocide of the 20th century.
This article doesn't say many surprising things about identity, but I think it pulls together many themes quite well. For example, did you know the Pope is against European unity?
Nations Struggle to Find Common Threads, Associated Press
By Tom Rachman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Associated Press
April 18, 2004
Italian businessman Stefano Morgan looks on as he sits in the historic San Marco cafe in Trieste, northern Italy. From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together. Now the expanding European Union looks for common threads.
TRIESTE, Italy – From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together.
The Romans walloped their neighbors. Catholics and Protestants shared God but couldn't agree on much else. The French and British irritated each other nonstop. And that was before the world wars and genocide of the 20th century.
After centuries of dispute, these notoriously fractious folk have begun to unite under the European Union, with a common currency, a planned constitution, and talk of a joint foreign policy and army.
The various names for this place – from Europe to Europa to Evropa – are the buzzwords of the day. The name, born of Greek mythology on ancient Crete, proclaims itself everywhere, from euro bank notes to the Eurostar train burrowing under the English Channel.
On May 1, the European Union expands from 15 to 25 members, tying ex-Soviet bloc states to Mediterranean islands to Western European powers – 455 million citizens, 20 official languages, age-old resentments and memories of war, not to mention a blinding number of ways to cook dinner.
But do Europeans really have anything in common? Interviews in several European countries indicate that few here feel foremost European, in part because it's so tricky defining what "a European" is.
An EU poll of the 25 countries published in February bears this out. Asked how they will see themselves in the near future, 86 percent said being European would come second to their present nationality or wouldn't figure at all.
Traditionally, people strive for a state; here in Trieste, crossroads of the Slavic east, Germanic center and Latin south, the invented European state must strive for a people – not an easy task in a city as historically muddled as this.
It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Mediterranean port in the 18th and 19th centuries; Italy incorporated it in 1918; the Nazis occupied it near the end of World War II; Yugoslavia took brief control after Germany's defeat; the British and Americans bumped them out; and now, it's part of Italy – and by extension the European Union.
Librarian Lisbeth Stiger was born in Austria, works in a German cultural center and speaks fondly of Trieste, her adopted city, where people eat pasta but sip coffee in Viennese-style cafes, a custom harking back to Austro-Hungarian times.
Her setting didn't appear to make her feel much more European.
"Between an Irishman and someone from Malta there's a huge difference, both culturally and in the way of thinking," Stiger said. "I'd never say I feel European. ... Deep down I'm Austrian."
At the University of Trieste, in Piazzale Europa – Europe Square – students hanging out between classes indicated that Europeans do share values, but not a common identity.
A 24-year-old law student, Alex Tardivo, puffed a cigarette and suggested that "tolerance could be our strong point." A 22-year-old engineering student, Omar Tullio, said European culture "is fairly embryonic now."
Certainly, Europe isn't a melting pot, a shared allegiance, a "United States." That was never the intention of the six countries that started the partnership in the 1950s as an economic bloc to lift them out of the wreckage of World War II.
That said, outlines of European identity can be sketched, with admittedly imperfect strokes:
–Europeans share pride in their stunningly creative past, their art and science, whose ancient markers are still evident in centuries-old frescoes dabbed onto the ceilings of village churches and in the stunning architecture of great cities.
"Europe means common tradition regardless of the many historical antagonisms," former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said in Warsaw. "It's a Europe of common history, tradition, and civilization, which leads to human rights and finally to democracy."
–Europeans also tend to believe that their governments have an obligation to care for the weak, and they pay high taxes to finance generous health, welfare and pension systems.
"That's different from the American conception where there's much more stress on individual effort," said Heather Grabbe of the Centre for European Reform in London.
–Totalitarianism in the 20th century – Nazism, Communism – has bred a reluctance to engage in military conflicts.
"I suppose compared to the Americans we are all depressives – but then they haven't suffered so many wars and ethnic conflicts on their own soil as we have," 35-year-old Hungarian Cornelia Sarkozi said in Budapest.
–At times, they agree less on what they are than on what they are not – not African, not Asian, and not American.
"As a European, I feel much more open to changes, open to new interests, cultures and countries. I see Americans as much more limited in the way of thinking and seeing things," said Stiger, the librarian.
EU proponents tout their project not only as a way to help nations prosper. The conditions for membership – market economy, democracy, human rights – have brought considerable changes in countries still struggling with the legacy of dictatorships.
With all that, do Europeans need to feel like brothers and sisters?
The EU would be stronger if they did. The idea of "being European" is sometimes mixed up with being in the club itself. The danger is that when EU-building hits a rough patch, people forget the benefits of open borders and tariff-free trade and turn sour on being European.
The euro, the most obvious sign of unity, is a case in point. Some EU citizens complain that the new currency brought huge inflation. Costs have certainly shot up in Italy since the euro was introduced in 2002, with many accusing shopkeepers of greedily rounding up prices in the new currency.
"I don't want Europe. I want Italy. I want a return of the lira and all that," grumbled Trieste furniture salesman Mariano Gianella, lighting cigarettes with a matchbook inappropriately emblazoned with the blue-and-yellow EU flag. "They've doubled the prices and that's it."
One strong proponent of European unity outside the EU is Pope John Paul II. The Polish-born pontiff argues that this continent's Christian history helps define Europeans.
Several countries don't like the sound of that, especially those trying to appear inclusive to growing populations of immigrants, many of them Muslim. The issue is one of many that have deadlocked the proposed constitution.
Awkward as it may be, debate over religion and European values has become unavoidable. France and Germany are struggling over allowing Islamic head scarves in public settings, while Italy was scandalized when a court ordered Christian crosses removed from a school – a ruling later overturned.
Immigration and the expansion of the EU both throw doubt on whether it's possible to define "Europeans" as their numbers and nature shift.
Trieste businessman Cheng Tsu Jung is an immigrant from China and an Italian citizen, firmly rooted on this continent and holding strong opinions about it.
He argued that Europe still has to win over its own people – offer something tangible and sweet to sell the idea of being European.
Cheng looks to his 14-year-old Italian-born son, fluent in this country's language but struggling with Chinese.
"The new generation," he says, "will feel more European than we do."
EDITOR'S NOTE – AP writers Monika Scislowska in Warsaw and Karl Peter Kirk in Budapest contributed to this report.
In France, the President's party has decided to publicly oppose Turkey's candidacy to the EU. The official position, which is that of the Union, is a "technical" one: if Turkey complies with the crtieria applied to all the others by the end of 2004, negotiations will start.
The French right is now saying that Europe needs to fix its "limits" and that accepting Turkey would "change its nature." Valery Giscard d'Estain, an ex-president who recently headed the process for drafting a constitution has the same position. It is a point of agreement with the extreme right and they want to make it an issue during the coming European election. It goes along the lines of those who in several European countires (Germany and Denmark, among others) insist on the "Christian" nature of Europe.
Some people on the left (Balibar among them) think that the richness of Europe comes from its inherent and historical diversity, but opposing Turkey's entry plays with powerful racist feelings that can be found accross the political spectrum. The issue is essential for the evolution of the EU, for the definition of Europe's identity, and for its relations with the Muslim world.
La droite française remet en question un engagement historique de l'Europe vis-à-vis de la Turquie
LE MONDE | 09.04.04 | 14h34
L'UMP entre en opposition avec le président de la République sur la candidature d'Ankara à l'Union. La "vocation européenne" de la Turquie avait été reconnue par de Gaulle en 1963
Le ministre des affaires étrangères français, Michel Barnier, a dû faire une mise au point, jeudi 8 avril, à propos des relations de la Turquie avec l'Union européenne : "La ligne de la France reste la même", a-t-il dit, après qu'Alain Juppé eut pris, la veille, le contre-pied de la politique officielle française en contestant, au nom de l'UMP, la vocation européenne de ce pays. A l'Elysée, on appuyait, jeudi, les déclarations de M. Barnier, en confirmant que la position de la France n'avait pas changé, et restait "celle que le président n'a cessé de répéter ces dernières années".
Le parti de la majorité est donc entré en opposition avec le président de la République et le gouvernement, sur une question qui promet de devenir l'un des sujets sensibles du débat préélectoral. Même si l'on fait valoir, à l'Elysée, que "chacun est dans son rôle" et qu'il ne s'agit là que du "jeu démocratique" normal, il est peu probable que les électeurs s'y retrouvent.
On sentait à vrai dire depuis quelque temps que la question turque posait quelques problèmes à la droite française. La perspective d'une adhésion, même lointaine, de la Turquie à l'ensemble européen est en effet contestée dans son principe sur deux fronts : par les droites extrémistes et souverainistes, décidées à en faire un de leurs thèmes de mobilisation pour les élections européennes, mais aussi par des milieux proeuropéens, notamment à l'UDF. Des hommes comme Valéry Giscard d'Estaing ou Jean-Louis Bourlanges se sont affichés comme farouchement opposés à l'entrée de la Turquie dans l'Union.
En estimant, mercredi, qu'il faut fixer des limites à l'Union sous peine de la "dénaturer" et que la Turquie ne doit pas être dedans, Alain Juppé reprend les arguments de ces derniers. Il a reconnu qu'il avait "évolué" sur le sujet, et c'est peu dire.
M. Juppé, lorsqu'il était minis- tre des affaires étrangères, avait en effet activement défendu une vision stratégique des relations avec la Turquie : sa démocratisation, le rapprochement de ce grand pays musulman avec l'Europe pouvaient avoir un effet stabilisateur dans la région, et l'Europe avait tout à y gagner. Alain Juppé a été l'artisan de l'accord d'union douanière de 1995, qui faisait de la Turquie le pays non membre le plus étroitement associé à l'Europe. Il eut à le défendre contre la Grèce, contre une partie des députés européens, contre les socialistes français qui s'enflammaient soudain de compassion pour les Kurdes maltraités.
Ce n'était certes qu'un accord d'union douanière. Mais dès lors, et depuis l'arrivée de Jacques Chirac à l'Elysée, la France est considérée par les Turcs tournés vers l'Europe comme leur meilleur soutien dans l'Union. Cette idylle n'a connu que quelques incidents de parcours sans lendemain, quand les parlementaires français s'emparaient de la question du génocide arménien.
A de multiples reprises ces dernières années, Jacques Chirac a rappelé sa position invariable, la dernière fois avec peut-être un peu plus de prudence, lors du Conseil européen du 26 mars : "Les efforts de la Turquie en vue d'intégrer toutes les règles de la démocratie et de l'économie de marché sont indiscutables, a dit le président. C'est le rapport de la Commission -attendu pour octobre- qui nous permettra de décider s'il y a lieu ou non d'engager des négociations, qui seront longues, pour son adhésion."
La question qui est posée est donc de savoir si les changements introduits par la Turquie dans sa législation sont suffisants pour satisfaire aux normes européennes, et s'ils sont effectivement mis en œuvre dans la pratique. Pour les autorités françaises, c'est une question "technique". Aucune question de principe ne se pose en revanche sur la "vocation européenne" de la Turquie, sur sa légitimité à intégrer à terme, même si c'est dans longtemps, l'ensemble européen.
C'est sur ce point qu'Alain Juppé a rompu, mercredi, avec la position officielle.
Le débat sur la Turquie n'est pas propre à la France. Le chancelier Kohl avait en son temps mis les pieds dans le plat en faisant référence à l'héritage chrétien de l'Europe ; l'Union chrétienne-démocrate (CDU) lui emboîte le pas aujourd'hui, de même que d'autres démocrates-chrétiens et diverses extrêmes droites européennes, notamment au Danemark. Mais la position officielle de la France ne lui est pas propre non plus : c'est la position officielle de l'Union.
Ce qui fait la particularité de la Turquie dans le débat sur "les limites de l'Europe" c'est, plus que sa petite partie de territoire située en Europe continentale, l'engagement historique qu'avaient pris envers elle de Gaulle et Adenauer en 1963, impulsant un accord d'association qui proclamait la "vocation européenne" de ce pays. Pendant de longues années, l'évolution politique tourmentée de la Turquie a épargné aux Européens d'avoir à se préoccuper de cette promesse ; la Turquie n'était pas même reconnue comme pays candidat.
C'est en 1999, au sommet d'Helsinki qui trace les grandes lignes de l'élargissement jusqu'en 2005, qu'Ankara se voit reconnaître le statut de candidat. Le texte d'Helsinki est sans ambiguïté sur le fond : "La Turquie, dit ce texte, est un pays candidat, qui a vocation à rejoindre l'Union" quand il aura rempli les critères de conformité définis en 1993 à Copenhague. En 2002, lors d'un autre sommet à Copenhague, les Quinze font un grand pas de plus vers Ankara. Si la Turquie répond aux critères fin 2004 (ce sera l'objet du rapport de la Commission en octobre), "l'Union ouvrira avec elle des négociations d'adhésion", déclare le sommet dans ses conclusions.
Claire Tréan
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 10.04.04
Heres a couple older articles about Turkey and the European Union and the support of Britain and especially the US. This should give some background for the story I am working on about the Turkish community in Germany and their reactions to the issue of Turkey and the EU.
Turkey could make the EU a much more powerful political player. Yet the support of the US is perhaps a double edged sword. Who wants that and who doesnt?
BBC News - Bush backs Turkey's EU efforts
BBC News - Thorny Issues for the EU
Bush Backs Turkey's EU Efforts
By Rob Watson
BBC Washington correspondent
US President George Bush has strongly backed Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.
He expressed his support during talks at the White House with the leader of Turkey's ruling party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In a sign of just how seriously the US is courting Turkey, Mr Erdogan was given time not just with President Bush, but with some of his most senior advisers as well.
With a smiling Mr Erdogan close by, the president said the US stood side-by-side with Turkey in its desire to become a member of the European Union.
It is a matter of great strategic importance to the Bush administration.
The US sees Turkey as a potential role model for other predominantly Muslim countries, and believes its embrace of secular democracy should be rewarded and encouraged by EU membership.
In diplomacy, though, there is often a catch.
The US also hopes that backing Turkey's efforts to join the EU will, in turn, lead to Ankara supporting possible military action against Iraq.
For his part, Mr Erdogan said joining the European Union was the most important modernisation project for his country since the creation of the Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
EU member countries are due to discuss enlargement of the union this weekend, though Turkey is not expected to be given a chance a join anything like as early as it would like to.
Thorny Issues for the EU
By Roger Hardy
BBC regional analyst
A sharp debate has erupted following the European Union's decision that Turkey will have to wait at least two more years before it is invited to start negotiations on membership.
Britain has been pushing for Turkish EU entry
Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul has strongly criticised the decision - while the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, defended the EU's handling of Turkey's application to join.
Britain is one of the countries which has argued that paving the way for Turkish membership of the EU would send a positive signal to the Muslim world.
It would show that Europe was not anti-Muslim - and that a modern Muslim country is capable of being integrated with the West.
But as the mood in Copenhagen descends into mutual recrimination, it is clear that the Turkish question has become entangled with a whole host of issues that are not easy to reconcile.
The relationship between Islam and the West is only one of them.
Europe's concern
For the United States, the issue is essentially strategic. As it prepares for a possible war against Iraq, it sees Turkey as an invaluable ally.
The Europeans see that as only one issue among many - and resent the heavy pressure President Bush has brought to bear on them.
The summit showed that historic changes need imaginative leadership
They see integrating Turkey as a huge challenge, and one that cannot be rushed. For some EU members, the priority is human rights.
Others fear that Turkish membership - and the free movement of Turkish workers throughout Europe - would fuel anti-immigrant sentiment.
When tempers have cooled, it may become possible for Turkey and the EU to realise the historic significance of what has been achieved at Copenhagen.
This is that Europe is preparing to redefine itself in an important way, and that this gives Turkey a unique chance to complete its transition to democracy and modernity.
But the other message from this summit is that historic change takes time, and needs imaginative leadership on all sides.
A surge in the building of mosques is another sign of the transforming power of immigration. But the Islamic centers of faith also prompt fear.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 17, 2004
(Interesting story dealing with Turkey, immigration, and the impact
of Islam on national identities)
BERLIN — The chink and scrape of stonecutters echo through the gray-domed mosque that rises like a glimmer of misplaced architecture in a city where the Muslim call to prayer is a widening whisper.
Dusted in marble, workmen scurry in the muted glow of stained glass. Some paint Koranic verses on the walls; others make last-minute alterations to golden-tipped minarets pricking a drizzly skyline. Anxious Berliners sometimes peek into the courtyard, where Ali Gulcek, a husky, nimble man, assures them his religion is not a threat.
"I need to enlighten the Germans so their prejudice of Islam will go away," said Gulcek, whose Islamic organization is building the mosque. "Our mosque will be completed in May. We've wanted a legitimate mosque for so long. For years, we've been meeting in backyards and basements. We don't want to hide anymore."
Gulcek's mosque is part of the surge in Islamic construction sweeping Germany. The number of traditional mosques with their distinctive minarets nearly doubled in Germany from 77 in 2002 to 141 in 2003, according to Islam Archive, a Muslim research group in the city of Soest. An additional 154 mosques and cultural centers are planned, many of them in the countryside, where vistas are dotted with symbols of crescent moons and crosses.
Like the cultural battles over allowing Muslim women to wear headscarves in European schools, mosques are an indication that immigration is transforming social, religious and aesthetic landscapes. Staccato Turkish and throaty Arabic syllables whirl amid European vernaculars, and where once there was a German bakery there is now a Moroccan kebab stand. In some bookshops, the Koran is as prominent as the Bible, and Islamic worry beads sometimes rattle alongside rosaries.
Mosques are landmarks of faith. But in Europe they are also symbols of change that can instigate fear, especially as congregations at Christian churches steadily decline on a continent with the fastest-aging population in the world. A mosque often means a neighborhood is no longer what it was. Skin hues are darker, customs different, and society's failure at integration is laid bare.
For many Europeans since Sept. 11, mosques are perceived — unlike churches or synagogues — as caldrons of radicalism instead of places of worship. That sentiment is likely to endure if Islamic militants were involved last week's train bombings in Madrid that killed 201 people and wounded 1,500 others.
"Building a mosque won't create integration," said Werner Mueller, a pharmacist in a Berlin neighborhood where proposals for two mosques are encountering opposition from government agencies. "These new mosques will make Islam more visible, and jobless and angry Muslim men will go to them. They can become places infiltrated by political Islam."
Such sensitivity stems from the Al Quds mosque's link to Sept. 11: Mohamed Atta and other hijackers had regularly worshipped at the warren of rooms above a gym with smudged windows in Hamburg before they moved to the United States. Thousands of nondescript mosques, some tucked in alleys, others half-hidden in old factories, are scattered across Europe. There are nearly 2,400 in Germany alone, according to the Islam Archive.
The Berlin government is seeking more control over blueprints for larger mosques. The city's planning office wants veto power on all building projects that may impinge upon a borough's character. The veto proposal is expected to take effect this year and could complicate plans for four mosques in the city boroughs of Kreuzberg and Neukoelln. The government says it is not singling out mosques, but trying to bring uniformity to the skyline.
"Berlin has a large Turkish population," said Petra Reetz, a spokeswoman for the planning office. "That always has to be a consideration. But we are still a Central European town and we'd like to keep the face of a Central European town, not a Turkish town."
Such sentiments have made Mehmet Bayram a patient architect. The projects he treasures most, including mosques and Islamic cultural centers, are yet to be built, tangled in negotiations with government agencies. Bayram splices architecture, folding Islamic nuances into European designs to make Muslim edifices more palatable to the German eye. What could be considered minarets on the facade of one of his proposed cultural centers, for example, are instead spiraling stairwells.
Bayram described one project like this: "The main entrance gate has a European style, and on the third floor you will find Gothic arches. That is Christian architecture. The dome has a Turkish-Seldshuk form, and the little arches at the upper minarets are of Indian style…. It is my intent that the building's street level invites visitors to overcome their fears" about Islam.
Gulcek's mosque is being built south of the city center by the Turkish Islamic Union, one of several Islamic organizations in Germany overseeing construction plans for such projects. Most of Germany's 3 million Turks — the nation's largest minority — belong to the lineage of guest workers who began arriving here in the 1950s to fuel post-World War II reconstruction. This history has made the Turks more entrenched and better organized to finance and build mosques than newly arrived Muslims in other European nations.
Gulcek, a German citizen, moved to Berlin with his parents 24 years ago from the Turkish city of Kayseri. One recent day, as rain fell and the stonecutters sipped tea, Gulcek walked through the courtyard of the new mosque, where a cemetery faced Mecca and the hum of traffic drifted over the surrounding brick wall.
"It's taken 13 years to build," said Gulcek, a smiling, yet exasperated, diplomat of sorts between cultures. "The biggest problem was raising money from Berlin Muslims. Then we found out our minarets were too high, and we had to raise more money for a $100,000 fine from the borough. Why? It came down to a misunderstanding. We didn't know about German law, and the borough didn't tell us.
"It was difficult to explain our idea of the mosque to the Germans. We should have explained it better," he said. "If you communicate, there are fewer problems, but there always seems to be a lace curtain between Germans and Muslims. Europeans have a prejudice and a fear of change."
Communication often seems impossible. Mosque proposals throughout the continent have met with opposition petition drives and street protests. Many mosques and their Islamic clergy exist in parallel, almost sequestered spheres from the larger European community.
"The main problem with integrating mosques into German society is that many mullahs and imams are coming from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries," said Lydia Nofal, manager of Inssan, a multicultural organization battling with government agencies to build a 65,000-square-foot mosque and community center in Berlin. "One of our main goals is to get Islamic leaders from Germany so they know the language and the culture."
Navigating the sensitivities of race and religion can be difficult. On Sunday mornings, church bells peal throughout Europe's towns and cities. But in many mosques, the Muslim call to prayer, which in the Middle East crackles over loudspeakers atop minarets, is almost hushed. The devout check their watches for prayer times, and quietly kneel.
The mosque building boom, mirroring the growth of an Islamic population in Europe that has doubled over the last decade to between 13 million and 15 million, may be most pronounced in Germany. But France, home to Europe's largest Islamic community, has 49 traditional mosques, including nine large ones in Paris. The estimated number of mosques in Britain — most of them converted buildings, apartments or prayer rooms with no minarets — has jumped from 613 in 1996 to about 1,000 today.
In Berlin's Kreuzberg borough, on a street scented with skewered lamb and spices and flecked with women wearing head scarves, Heidemarie Weigand and her husband, Hans-Juergen, were having a going-out-of-business sale at their toy train store. Heidemarie said her old customers had died or moved away and few newcomers were buying engines and cabooses these days.
"There's so many Turkish faces. There are hardly any Germans here, and the foreigners have no use for trains," said Heidemarie, her graying hair brushed back over a mauve sweater. "Many Germans aren't happy about the mosques. I don't think Turkey would like it if we went there and built a bunch of Christian churches."
A few doors down, Burhan Kesici, a soft-spoken man with a round face and a thin beard, sat in a green leather chair and spoke of the mosques his Islamic Federation in Berlin hoped to build. He believes in integration, he said, and even went against the wishes of his Turkish parents and wife by becoming a German citizen. Kesici understands the sensitivities that arise as Islamic culture deepens its imprint on Europe.
"There are a lot of new Islamic projects in the Kreuzberg-Neukoelln area," Kesici said. "The Germans may be saying, 'This is dangerous for us. There's too much of a concentration of religion in a small area.' But we Muslims have to be seen as normal. The mosques will allow us to show ourselves off better to society. We can help with the crime and social problems in these neighborhoods."
The Islamic Federation represents 26 Islamic organizations and 12 of Berlin's 75 mosques — only three of which have minarets. The federation, Kesici said, is in the midst of tedious negotiations with Kreuzberg borough on the design of a $4.9-million mosque and community center project. The government wants the federation to shrink the mosque by 40% so it will not overwhelm the neighborhood.
"The world is changing," said Kesici, who has a political science degree from the Free University of Berlin. "The European Union is expanding, and people are living with different cultures. I am a German and a Muslim. But the head scarf and mosque issues are showing us they don't want to accept our values. They're saying, 'You can be German, but a second-class German.' "
Kesici's dream mosque, designed by architect Bayram, may remain a blueprint for several more years. Gulcek's mosque is stone and steel and colored-glass reality. It will open in two months. Christians and Jews and even secularists will be invited.
"Fifty years ago when the Turks first came," Gulcek said, "they went from their dormitory to the job and back to their dormitory. They would never have imagined that one day a mosque would be built here. And now Turkish businessmen have German employees. So I can imagine that in another 50 years names like Ahmed and Mehmet may sound natural to the German ear and one day may be even sitting in Parliament."
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Times staff writers Petra Falkenberg in Berlin and Achrene Sicakyuz in Paris and special correspondent Bruce Wallace in London contributed to this report.
March 11, 2004
Union, but Not Unanimity, as Europe's East Joins West
By JOHN DARNTON
This article in the New York Times deals with an issue that we have discussed in our last class: the enormous amount of "homework" that the Eastern countries have had to do in order to be accepted in the EU, and how this has considerably reduced their enthusiasm. It is also a useful reading to try to understand what kind of stories can be "sold" to a large American newspaper on this subject.
PARIS — When the European Union expands eastward this spring, it will end the 65-year divide caused by the 20th century's hot and cold wars and shift the union from a plush club of 15 like-minded nations into a street bazaar of countries differing in wealth, stature and outlook.
What is today a tight configuration huddled around France and Germany that seeks to offset American power will on May 1 become an amalgam of 25 highly diverse states, including eight strongly pro-American former Soviet satellites.
Therein lies a paradox. The new European Union, stretching from the rocky shores of Ireland to Poland's forest border with Ukraine, will be in a better position than ever to serve as a counterweight to the United States. Yet the incoming members look more to Washington than to Berlin and Paris.
"In historical terms it's an extraordinary moment," noted Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford specialist in European studies. "It's been said that Europe has had a name for 2,500 years but is still in the design stage.
"France and Germany have led European integration for 40 years, and now that's clearly over. We have to wrestle with the question of who is going to set the agenda for this huge, sprawling entity of 25 states and 455 million people."
Scarred by their postwar existence in the shadow of the Soviet Union, most of the new members bring a different mentality and different habits. They are apt to be suspicious of distant bureaucracy in Brussels, as they were of Moscow, but eager to receive European Union handouts.
They tend to be idealistic, wanting to spread freedom and oppose totalitarianism, but also cynical about politicians and accustomed to corruption in everyday life.
"When we say Europe in Eastern Europe," said Andrei Plesu, a former Romanian foreign minister, "we usually think about something in the past, something we lost and have to regain.
"It's something in an old, faded photograph, the world between the two World Wars, a nostalgia, a longing. In the West, Europe is a project. In the East, it's a memory."
For both groups it is a bit of a chore.
In Eastern Europe, the once paradisiacal vision of "rejoining Europe" has lost its sheen, whittled down by years of slightly humiliating negotiations to join the union and new fears of being swamped by the powerful West.
In Western Europe, support for the enlargement is tempered by concerns that the Eastern countries will drain away wealth and jobs, complicating problems of economic stagnation and tensions over illegal immigration. The door is being opened reluctantly, with a shoulder-shrugging sense of noblesse oblige.
"We're not in a very good mood right now," said Olivier Duhamel, a professor at the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris. "We're worried about unemployment, immigration and the French identity, and when you put all that together, you fear enlargement. The only people talking about a bigger Europe these days are those talking against it."
In the formerly Communist East, the sense of anticlimax is almost palpable. "Entering the E.U. was always a dream," said Maciej Karpinski, a film producer with Polish Television, "but now that it's here it just doesn't feel substantial."
Few people in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other new member countries would go so far as to try to slam the door closed. Many still see the advantages — especially the young, who will now be able to travel to the West more easily — no passport required, just a quick flash of a national ID card — and to join student exchange programs.
But those of working age are particularly bitter that almost all of the 15 current Western members are imposing restrictions to keep out Eastern workers for several years. Others worry that Western products will push their own off the shelves or raise prices or push small-scale local farmers into oblivion.
As a result, May 1 — a day for workers observed under Communism with mandatory parades and lackluster banner-waving — is not likely to see a spontaneous outpouring of celebration. Even some dramatic official plans have fizzled, like one in Warsaw that would have wrapped the skyscraper called the Palace of Culture, infamous as Stalin's gift to postwar Poland, in gold.
Europeans have waked up to the fears and palpable differences that arise when borders come down, as seen in the unification of East and West Germany, where after more than a decade, disparities in wealth and spirit persist.
Up to now the belief in Europe was that as in Germany, most economic transformation would flow largely in one direction, from west to east. The unstated assumption was that the 380 million Westerners would be at the helm and that the 75 million Easterners would be lucky enough to be on board.
But now West Europeans worry that too many Easterners may sink the boat. They envision poor immigrants coming the other way, flooding their cities and burdening their bountiful welfare systems.
At the same time, the West is apprehensive about the combative mentality displayed by battle-hardened anti-Communist dissidents in many East European elites, and both sides worry about the political schizophrenia of "old Europe" and "new Europe" that emerged over the war in Iraq.
Poland, with a history of rebellion and its strong pro-American feelings, made plain at a failed summit conference in December that it does not expect to be treated as a second-class state.
"We can't put up with an E.U. in which France and Germany have the final say," said Adam Michnik, the former Polish dissident who now runs Gazeta Wyborcza, the major daily. "And we don't want an anti-American E.U."
That position springs, he and many others insist, not from blind lockstep obedience to Washington, but rather from a distinct East European sensibility.
Petr Pithart, president of the Senate in the Czech Republic, described it this way: "Why do we care about solidarity between Europe and the United States? It's the experience of two totalitarian regimes — the Nazis and the Communists. We're conscious of the fragility of democracy. That sense doesn't exist in Western Europe."
In Western Europe, said Jiri Pehe, director of New York University's Prague center, "it's anti-intellectual to think in a simplistic way about good and evil. Here, we say we know what's good and evil — it is simple. We've lived under it. We have a less foggy view of the basics."
It is of course unclear how long Eastern Europeans will cling to their cold war vision of the United States as the gravitational center of the West.
As long as they do, the scales of loyalty are likely to tip toward the Atlantic alliance so fundamental to British governments of the last 50 years. Yet most believe that those differences will eventually melt away, much as they have as Western Europe knits itself ever closer together.
"Geography will triumph over history," declared Tony Judt, a Europe specialist at New York University. "It will eventually matter more to the Eastern Europeans to be in the favor of Brussels, because day to day they will need Brussels."
Dennis MacShane, Britain's minister for Europe, observed: "The great fallacy is that as Europe gets bigger, somehow it gets more disintegrated. The evidence is that every new previous enlargement has been followed by the need for more sharing of sovereignty and someone to set the rules in Brussels."
Over time, too, the union's voluminous codification of laws and standards, some 80,000 pages long, may wear down Eastern Europe's rough edges, fostering political stability and reducing ingrained corruption.
An unknown factor here is the United States foreign policy. Officially and historically, Washington is on record as favoring a strong and united Europe, but what if the Continent becomes a monolithic competitor in economics and foreign policy?
Already there are divisions over the delicate question of whether the union should admit Turkey, a country of 70 million. Washington is pressing for admission on the ground that Turkey is a NATO member and a secular democracy that needs to find stability in the arms of Europe.
Europeans are deeply split over the question. Some say it would be impossible to conceive of a governing structure that could accommodate, say, Turkey and Germany, countries with comparable size of population but hugely different levels of development.
Others say opening the door to millions of Islamic immigrants — in addition to the millions of Muslims that Europe is already struggling to absorb — is asking for trouble because it will set off religious and ethnic feuding and provide fodder for far-right movements.
For some the question boils down to an often fruitless attempt to fix Europe's natural boundaries. For others it becomes an effort to define what it means to be a European.
Quickly, such conversations turn to intangibles, to talk of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and definitions offered centuries earlier by Dante and Voltaire. Some talk of a feeling of belonging that overcomes them in a Central European coffeehouse or of alienation when they visit the United States.
"It's paradoxical," Mr. Pehe said. "Here I'm a Czech. But when I go to the U.S., I'm looked at as a European, and then I feel I'm a European. It's one of those concepts that you see better from the outside."
Many young Europeans are not clear on how to charactize what it means to be European, according to this International Herald Tribune article, except to say that it is everything that the US is not. The lack of self-identity has to do with the long history and various cultures that make up the European Union, blurring a clear identity, which will become even more unclear as 10 more countries join the union.
I think this article is very insightful for non-Europeans in general, but especially for us, since it delves into the minds of Europeans in their 20s and 30s and shows how they view themselves and the difficulties and complexities involved. It's as if they need America to define who they are, which signifies how strong of an influence the US has had globally and supports the notion of Imperialism.
International Herald Tribune
For young Europeans, identity questions
BY Sarah Lyall
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
For young Europeans, identity questions
Sarah Lyall/IHT
Thursday, March 4, 2004
PRAGUE As one of the new generation of European businessmen who fly around the Continent as readily as others might take the bus across town, Petr Eisler feels at home in Europe, mostly. It is only now and then, like when he arrives at the immigration desk at London's Heathrow Airport, that he is suddenly flung back into his old role as an outsider at the European party.
"They're always asking me how long I plan to stay, and do I have enough money with me," said Eisler, 39, who founded his software company in the Czech Republic more than a decade ago, speaks fluent English and recently opened an office in London. Once, he was traveling with a former industry minister of the Czech Republic and was startled to hear the same questions being asked of him, too - a sign, at least, that such Western inhospitality is nothing personal.
As the European Union prepares to open its doors to 10 new countries in May, people in their 20s and 30s interviewed here and elsewhere in Europe say that they feel part of the Continent yet separate from it. The feeling has partly to do with the way European countries have historically perceived each other, and partly to do with puzzlement about what Europe - not the physical place, but the philosophical concept - really is.
To the extent that there is an entity called Europe, with a distinguishable identity, culture and world view, many young Europeans say they are not so sure how to characterize it, except perhaps in describing what it is not. With America now the only real world power left in the post-Soviet landscape, there is a growing sense that Europe, in so far as it exists as an idea, can best be defined as the anti-America.
This appears to be true among the younger generation in Prague, part of the former communist Europe that has lately allied itself with the United States, even as Western Europe shies away from it.
"As with all identities, the easiest way to create an identity is to create it as against something else," said Adam Pulchart, 26, who is studying for a master's degree in European studies at Charles University in Prague.
"The rudimentary European identity I have is formed against the United States, against the image of America as the new imperialist superpower that regards everything that happens in the world in the context of its own national interest."
To some Czechs, American patriotism, particularly in the Bush era, is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Soviet rhetoric of old.
"I remember all of this from the Russians, the same treatment of history," said Tereza Spencerova, who writes for Mlady Svet, a weekly magazine. Spencerova said she recently heard a joke about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a hapless student who asked an uncomfortable foreign policy question and later mysteriously disappeared. She said she had heard the same joke 15 years ago, but with a Soviet official in place of Rumsfeld.
"Once Bush started the war against terrorism, he started to use strong language that was the same as what the Russians used, like 'Who's not for us is against us,'" Spencerova said. "Europeans get nervous when someone comes and says that his truth and his world view are the only acceptable ones."
If Europe is not America, then what is it? Is there such a thing as a recognizable European identity?
It depends on whom you ask.
"Unfortunately, the answer is no," said Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the 37-year-old founder of the low-cost airline EasyJet. Born in Greece, Haji-Ioannou has homes in London, Monaco, New York and Athens, and is almost always on the road. He says he feels Greek in England, English in Greece and European in America.
"I wouldn't expect that everyone should suddenly feel European," he said. "Is someone from Alaska the same as someone from Florida? I think not."
Jan Vavra, the director and co-owner of a public relations firm in Prague, agreed. "For me, integration is good when it comes to commercial contracts and common legislation, but I don't believe there will be a new European man - there are too many differences in language and tradition from country to country," Vavra said in his office in a quiet corner of Prague.
"We can cooperate and be friends; we can make businesses and art together; and we can study in different countries. But that doesn't mean we will lose our nationality."
The more one scratches the surface, the more one realizes that many stereotypes still apply, at least in people's minds. To their European neighbors, the French are regarded as supercilious, the Germans as hyper-organized, the British as repressed and the Italians as chronically late.
"The global thinking is the same, but there are small, specific differences," said Zuzana Pitrova, 28, an executive at the Czech edition of Metro, a free newspaper with editions in 16 countries.
Pitrova said she was horrified when her boss, a Swede based in London, remained in his chair with his feet propped up on the table at their first meeting. "I'm a Czech woman, and I expect that a man will at least stand up when I walk into a room," she said.
Pitrova's European acquaintances do not consider her one of them, exactly. Her husband is American, and when they run into British friends, she said, "They look at me like, 'Oh, an Eastern-bloc chick who got married to an American so she could move to America.'" (For the record, the couple plans to move to Tokyo in the autumn.)
She said that with colleagues, too, her nationality can be a handicap. "They don't consider me European," she said. "They don't think my skills are as good as theirs, being from the Czech Republic."
The more Europeans come together, it seems, the more their differences are emphasized, even under an umbrella of similarities.
David Cerny, a 36-year-old sculptor in Prague, said "exaggerating national distinctions is part of the fun" of the new Europe.
Last summer, Cerny - who learned English from Beatles records and says he feels equally at home across the Continent - described the Czech population in an interview with a local newspaper as "an unmixed, uninteresting, slightly dumplingish, untanned mass" and lampooned "this constant stroking oneself on the belly stuffed with pork, sauerkraut and dumplings."
He applies the same broad view to other countries, too, particularly Germany. "It's like someone from New York talking about Texas," Cerny said. "Except that Texas never attacked New York and killed a couple of million people."
The tendency of national pride to slide into militant nationalism and even xenophobia is the dark side of European integration.
As the countries of Europe move closer together, their differences become exaggerated, especially to those who are suspicious of outsiders and worry about permeable borders, the influx of newcomers and a loss of national identity. Anticipating May 1, most West European countries have passed laws restricting the entry of workers from the new EU member countries, a cause of dismay to the poorer eastern countries.
In the Czech Republic, the post-Communist era has been marked by an increase in racial violence, particularly against members of the Roma minority, who have long been persecuted in central Europe.
Isolated during the Soviet era, Prague is more international than ever.
Americans by the tens of thousands moved here in the 1990s. Charles University is awash in students from across Europe who spend a semester or two under the auspices of the Erasmus and the Socrates programs, EU-sponsored exchanges.
But the country as a whole has a reputation for not welcoming outsiders.
"We're afraid of foreigners," Spencerova said. "A lot of people think that five minutes after we join the EU, our villages will be full of foreigners, and our traditions and language and culture will be destroyed. This fear is real. You can feel it in street corners, in newspapers, in political discussions."
What do the new Europeans have in common? Language, to a certain extent. When they travel, they tend to speak English, which has emerged as Europe's most readily accessible common language.
"I come from a generation where everyone pretty much speaks English, or at least tries to," said Gabriela Tomsikova, 29, a Czech who works in the Prague office of a Dutch electronics company.
"It's growing bigger and bigger. Even the French are speaking English now."
There are also shared political and cultural traditions. The United States is a country created from the bottom up; European countries were created from the top down. "There's a greater sense of history here," said Lucie Konigova, 28, a research fellow in the center for European analysis at the Institute of Foreign Relations in Prague. "We don't think in terms of individual rights as much, but in terms of social and community rights."
Cecile Antoine, 25, a Belgian who lives in Paris, said she felt that "Europe has a common thread that joins everyone together," at least for the younger generation, which has been raised on that notion.
"I feel like a European, though my roots are of course Belgian," said Antoine, who says she is just as happy in Paris as back home. Years of being part of the EU have instilled in her a sense that she is "part of a greater European community."
"All the countries from the Union have something in common, and I don't feel very different from a French person," she said.
There are signs that those who are even younger - teenagers who never knew the cold war - may be even more impervious to old-world national distinctions.
"My son is 15, and his way of thinking and seeing the world is very different from my point of view," said Spencerova, the Czech journalist. "It's 14 years from the revolution and he's just learned a new way of living which is completely different from the way that we were brought up. This new generation won't have a problem with definitions, with the difference between being Czech or German or something else."
Those in countries who are about to join the Union seem hopeful that long-established borders will fall away.
"The EU is looked at with a mixture of hope and trepidation," said Zuzanna Ziomecka, 27, who returned to Warsaw three years ago after living in the United States. "There's the thought that the EU might set standards we are having trouble setting ourselves, and might offer travel."
Not only will crossing Europe be easier for Poles - "I won't have to stand in long lines at the airport," Ziomecka said - but it will open Poland up to a new group of visitors.
"We'll be getting more people coming to Poland to see what a crazy place it is," she added, and "how much good can come from chaos."
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
Seven out of 10 Turks support joining the Europpean Union and the country's politicians say there's never been a "broader political consensus toward EU membership." The thought in Turkey is that joining the EU would "cement Turkey's secularism and raise incomes, which now stand at about one-quarter the average level of the Union," according to the International Herald Tribune article. But doing so won't be easy as they need all 25 EU members' votes. And France may be shakey while the other "heavyweights" like Germany, Britan, Italy and Spain appear to be in favor of at least negotiations.
I think this is interesting because as Turkey and its 70 million and growing Muslim population look to boost its economy and status as a secular state, it may solicit the US's support in gaining entry to the EU. And if the EU decides against letting Turkey negotiate its entry at the December summit, the rejection could have some interesting political implications. As Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in an interview, "all the Muslim world will once more think that, yes, there is a double standard, that there will always be a clash of civilizations."
"In Turkey, a pro-EU consensus" by Thomas Fuller
International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
In Turkey, a pro-EU consensus
Thomas Fuller/IHT IHT
Saturday, March 6, 2004
7 out of 10 favor joining the Union
ANKARA At a time of relative gloom and uncertainty for the European Union, some of its most enthusiastic supporters live here in Asia.
In Western Europe, a creeping note of worry has accompanied the imminent expansion of the Union to 25 members. But here in Turkey, politicians say there has never been broader political consensus on the drive toward EU membership.
Joining is seen as a way to cement Turkey's secularism and raise incomes, which now stand at about one-quarter the average level of the Union.
In opinion polls, nearly 70 percent of Turks say they want to join the EU, a number whose corollary is the government's methodical passage of reform packages required for EU membership.
The government begins every weekly cabinet meeting with an hourlong discussion on the implementation of EU-related laws, according to Murat Sungar, secretary general of a special government department that coordinates Turkey's drive for membership.
Since 2001, Turkey has rewritten more than one-fifth of its constitution. It abolished the death penalty except for times of war, repealed laws that barred the Kurdish minority from assembling or publishing in their language, and passed a law that prevents the press from being forced to reveal sources, among many other changes.
Reforms scheduled for April will remove the military, seen in Turkey as secularism's guardian, from civilian posts such as the national educational council. Such a change would until recently have been considered taboo.
Remarkably, even among supporters of the sole opposition party in Parliament, the left-leaning Republican People's Party, 85 percent want Turkey to join the EU, according to Kemal Dervis, the deputy head of the party.
The momentum is leading up to the climactic day of Turkey's aspirations: a December summit meeting in Brussels where European leaders will decide whether to allow the country to begin formal negotiations for entry.
A "yes" decision will require unanimous approval by the EU's 25 countries and would be followed by about a decade of detailed negotiations.
EU leaders must contemplate a future where its second-biggest member is a predominantly Muslim nation of 70 million people - and growing fast.
If Europe dashes Turkey's hopes, then the reform process here and the relative harmony between a governing Muslim party and the traditionally secular and powerful military establishment could end.
When asked about the prospect of failure, Turkey's leaders say there will be great disappointment and a belief that Europe treats Turkey differently because of its Muslim nature.
"All the Muslim world will once more think that, yes, there is a double standard, that there will always be a clash of civilizations," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in an interview.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, said in an interview with Europe-based journalists that Turks "would really have a heartache" if given a negative response.
Turkish politicians believe that the current political constellation in Europe favors a "yes" decision.
But they are not leaving it to chance. The government recently convened its ambassadors posted in EU countries to discuss lobbying efforts. Turkey may also call on the United States, a longtime and overt supporter of membership, to trumpet the cause.
EU leaders have been making positive noises recently. "Turkey is on the right path," Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said during a visit in February. "Turkey can always count on Germany for support."
Visiting Ankara on Wednesday, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, praised Turkey for its "positive approach" on the reunification of Cyprus. "We look forward to a positive decision," he said, referring to the EU summit talks in December.
In the past, Turks and others suspected that what European leaders said publicly to encourage Turkey was different what they actually felt.
Today, the enthusiasm seems more anchored in actual support, EU politicians say.
Turkey's longstanding enemy, Greece, has become a cheerleader for Turkish membership.
Ties started to thaw between the two through a pair of remarkable and cooperative foreign ministers and the "seismic diplomacy" behind each country's assistance to the other after deadly earthquakes in 1999.
The reasons for Greece's support are complex. Yannos Papantoniou, the Greek defense minister, says it is better to have Turkey in the club than outside. Still, he notes that Greece still has concerns about human rights and the depth of democratic reform in Turkey.
"We simply believe that if and when it joins the European Union it will be obliged to observe these rules and values," he said. "This will by itself resolve most of our problems."
Still, Papantoniou said he believed the recent expressions of support around Europe for Turkish membership were genuine.
"I'm not quite sure about the end of this game, whether the Europeans really believe that at some point Turkey will in fact become a member," Papantoniou said in an interview. "But I think they are sincere that they want to help Turkey enter into the road leading up to eventual membership." Greece is using the prospect of membership as a lever to solve a territorial dispute with Turkey in the Aegean Sea and as a way to bring about the reunification of Cyprus.
Both those issues are prerequisites to Greek support in December, Papantoniou said.
Ultimately the decision on Turkish admittance would be taken by a future generation of politicians, he added.
The negotiation process involves absorption by Turkey of the EU's 80,000 pages of laws.
Commentators who oppose Turkey's admission have argued that it would draw massive subsidies from the EU, that it is simply too big to swallow and that as an Asian country it has no place in a European Union. But Halefoglu is confident: "If we get the big fish the others will follow." There is an emerging consensus, here and in Brussels, among diplomats and politicians, that Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain are among the EU heavyweights likely to favor offering negotiations. The position of France, where support for EU enlargement has been cooler, is less certain.
With a need for unanimity, a "yes" is far from certain. The collapse of the EU's constitutional talks in December was mainly caused by the steadfast opposition of Poland and Spain to the draft document, a demonstration of how a small minority can block a big decision.
The admission of Turkey - a huge, existential question for the EU - is also likely to be more widely debated in public as December approaches.
Ultimately Turkey will be judged by what is known in EU jargon as the Copenhagen criteria, a short and relatively basic set of principles established by the EU in 1993.
There are political criteria: "stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities." And economic criteria: "the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union." A country must also be able to "take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union." Sungar, the secretary general of Turkey's EU coordination office, says one problem for the government is that the political criteria "cannot be calculated" and are therefore open to interpretation.
The European Commission, the EU's executive, is responsible for judging whether the criteria have been fulfilled. The commission will issue a report in October that will form the basis for talks at the December summit meeting. International Herald Tribune
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
These are two additional articles on the immigrant workers’ issue. The first (“Britain to unveil restrictions…”) is a clear explanation of Britain’s plan of a “managed migration” that could benefit the country’s economy. The article underlines two distinct but complementary positions: acceptance of skilled workers, on one hand, and zero tolerance toward “those who aim only to exploit the nation’s welfare benefits” on the other.
But what strikes the most is the European media approach to the issue: it is clear that some Eurosceptic newspapers (mainly conservative ones) used the topic as a mean to scream scared warnings, some of which seem deeply xenophobic, especially toward the gypsy community. (This could be an interesting topic for our European reports: what is the EU attitude toward the Roma community? Why does the community raise so much racist feelings?)
According to the article, there is a real immigration panic throughout the “old Europe”, and even some metropolitan legends are finding their way in the public opinion (the idea that new immigrants could carry the HIV virus is just ridiculous!)
The second article points out that the British measures are less tough than those imposed on the eight new entries by most other existing EU members.
The most interesting part of the piece is an overview of the British Press. Although “The Sun” is certainly not the best media model, it’s one of the most popular daily papers. And the fact that arguments such as “the country would be swamped by sick immigrants from Eastern Europe, taking advantage of the free National Health Service” is just scaring.
EU Business, "Britain to unveil restrictions on immigrants from new EU nations"
href=www.eubusiness.com/afp/040222165102.2ovgof4t
EU Business, "British government defends rules on EU entrants after 'influx' claims" href=www.eubusiness.com/afp/040224113251.8ar87jez
Here are some stories about last week’s European measures on the “freedom to work”. Nothing really new, but it’s a good summary. Also, it is interesting to see that the site proposes a poll to figure out if these measures are necessary and justified.
The question is: “Are current EU members right to restrict access of workers from new member states to their labour markets?”
What do you all think about that?
EU Business, "EU's freedom to work laws under threat".
href=www.eubusiness.com/topics/Newswire/EUNews.2004-02-27.0036
In an apparent shift away from his vision of a two-speed Europe, Germany's foreign minister Joshka Fischer is now saying the idea of a hard core Europe should be abandoned in pursuit of an integrated Europe. It seems his comments are designed to ameliorate certain EU members in order to bring about a resolution to the stalled constiutional negotiations.
It's one thing to say so publicly, but Germany and France will remain Europe's engines, so in theory an integrated Europe makes sense, but with 30 plus countries in the EU, a small core of leaders will always hold more clout and lead the EU in a certain direction.
Deutsche Welle, Fischer departs from Idea of a Core Europe
This site includes a link to the original Berliner Zeitung article in German EurActiv
I found the D-W news item first, but there's a full article in Financial Times
Fischer Departs From Idea of Core Europe
In an interview with German daily Berliner Zeitung over the weekend Fischer said that the idea of a core Europe was now "passé." He said he did not see France and Germany forging ahead if disagreement over the constitution continued. "Varying speeds of integration will appear from one state to the next," Fischer said and added, "We don't want that and that's why it can only be a transitional situation. I believe the pressure will be so great that history itself will push matters in the right direction". Fischer's words are made all the more significant by the fact that in 2000 he gave a landmark speech at Berlin's Humboldt University where he first spelt out the need for a two-speed Europe. The foreign minister said he had changed his views because of the consequences of September 11, and the need for Europe to politically shape globalization.
Fischer shifts away from two-speed EU
By Judy Dempsey in Brussels
Financial Times
Germany's foreign minister on Sunday presented an unexpected shift from open support for a two-speed Europe to championing a larger and more integrated one, a move cautiously welcomed by several countries, including the Irish European Union presidency and Poland.
Joschka Fischer pronounced this change of emphasis in an interview with Berliner Zeitung newspaper at the weekend, where he said a "core" Europe was not the solution to Europe's problems.
Germany, backed by France, had spearheaded plans for a small group of countries working together to push Europe forward, believing it would be impossible to do so once the EU expanded from 15 to 25 countries after May 1. Mr Fischer had first spelt out the need for a two-speed Europe in 2000 during a speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Mr Fischer emphasised the need for a strong, integrated Europe in the light of the continuing threat of terrorism since September 11 2001 and the threats emerging from failed states such as Afghanistan.
"We have to understand that you cannot shut away these sorts of conflicts into the basement of international politics and say, it is morally awful, it is awful in the humanitarian sense, but it does not threaten us," he said. "We have a new task that will dominate the century. We have to shape globalisation politically."
The question facing Europe was "whether we can grow close enough together to bring our weight to bear".
"A small Europe would be too small in the strategic dimension to deal with the new threats and challenges of terrorism and globalisation," he said.
"You need the sheer size and weight of Europe [of 15] and 25 and 30 [countries]." Europe had to "command a Continental weight" on a par with Russia, India, China and the US. This was why he now supported Turkey's candidacy to the EU unreservedly.
Because of enlargement, Europe needed the degree of integration that the constitutional treaty would provide, with a voting system proportional to population sizes, he said.
It was disagreements over voting allocations that prevented EU leaders at their summit last December from reaching agreement on the constitution. Germany and France said it was unreasonable for Poland and Spain to have more votes than their respective population sizes, while Britain insisted on unanimity over foreign policy.
Ireland, holder of the EU's rotating presidency, on Sunday welcomed Mr Fischer's approach. "We share his view that we should be focused on getting a new constitutional treaty rather than looking at a two-speed Europe," said a presidency spokesman.
Poland too supported Mr Fischer's remarks. "Poland has always believed in the need for a united and stronger European Union with efficiently functioning institutions," said Marek Grela, Polish ambassador to the EU.
For people who are pursuing stories concerning immigration. My favourite part of the story is at the end of it, it presents a list of what measures/restrictions different EU member states will deal with the migrant workers. Hope it will be useful.
Again it's from European Voice. You need to register to read the story. Originally it was by Martin Banks of The Economist.
MOVES to curb the ability of workers from new member states to take advantage of their EU citizenship and seek jobs in another country of the Union were this week branded “unfair and unjust”. The restrictions, which come in response to fears of a huge influx of workers to the present EU states after 1 May, have been staunchly attacked by accession states’ politicians.
The European Commission announced it would check whether bans introduced by member states were in line with EU law.
Although initially several EU states pledged to open their labour market to new countries’ workers, all of them made a U-turn in recent days, following popular concerns and media pressure.
On Monday (23 February), the UK announced it would impose restrictions, under which people from accession states will have to register for jobs. Migrants without work will be banned from most benefits for at least two years but those with jobs will be able to get some state help. Workers will be able to claim benefits, such as jobseeker’s allowance, only if they have worked continuously in Britain for at least a year.
The UK announcement was followed shortly by Ireland’s – the country stated it plans to limit access to its benefits system.
Ireland’s Social Affairs Minister Mary Coughlan said the move had been forced by the action of all the other member states.
Commission President Romano Prodi expressed his concern at the restrictions that were being announced. The most important question, according to Commission officials, is if arrangements that deny workers from eastern Europe benefits while granting them to others are discriminatory. Only citizens from Malta and Cyprus are exempt from the new rules.
Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan led a chorus of criticism of the restrictions, describing them as “unfair and unjust”. “When negotiations took place in 2001, many EU members insisted they would not introduce restrictions and that our citizens could work in these countries after May,” he said.
A spokesman for the Hungarian foreign ministry described them as a “backward step”. Margot Wallström, who is the acting employment and social affairs commissioner, has called on member states to “come clean” about what their exact plans are.
“There needs to be more transparency on this issue and we are asking member states to give us the information,” a spokesman said. Although all EU citizens in theory have the right to live, work and claim benefit in any member country, existing members are allowed to limit employment rights for residents of accession states for up to seven years, under the terms of a harshly negotiated deal. Member states, however, are going to apply varied restrictions for different periods of time:
Germany and Austria are set to keep restrictions for the full seven years. Only people with work permits will be allowed to seek employment;
Belgium and Finland will only allow those with work permits the right to jobs, for two years;
In France, work permits will be needed for two years. Immigrants who obtain a work permit will have the same access to social benefits as French citizens;
Greece plans to apply restrictions for two years. The new government after the 7 March elections is set to announce if restrictions will be prolonged;
Ireland will announce changes to its social security system to “prevent abuse” by newcomers;
Italy hasn’t announced its decision yet;
Luxembourg will apply restrictions for two years;
The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden initially pledged to let newcomers work freely in their countries but made U-turn recently. The Hague announced quotas of 22,000 workers in the first year, but is likely to revise the figure down. Sweden will apply benefits restrictions and Denmark refuses the right to benefits but will give residence and work permits to immigrants if they find a job within six months;
Portugal: will apply restrictions of up to two years. It offers 6,500 work permits yearly to applicants of all nationalities, and;
Spain will close its labour market for two years. Bilateral agreements with Poland are possible.
martinbanks@economist.com
With the accession of 10 eastern European (and poorer) nations into the EU in May 2004, one the main issues currently facing present EU members is the significant social and economic effect that is likely to occur as a new wave of immigrants start pouring in from the east. However, the following article, based on information from the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions, sheds a different light and attempts to dismiss the likelihood of the occurrence of a large migration of jobseekers to the west. The article indicates that it was difficult to persuade Hungarian jobseekers to move 200 to 300km for well-paying jobs let alone moving to a different country. Also mentioned is that in 2003 only 638 Hungarians applied for the 2000 work permits available to them in Germany.
Even though it provides an interesting point of view, I think it is erroneous to try to extrapolate migration patterns for all the soon-to-be members of the EU based on information from Hungary for three reasons. First, the desire to immigrate has different connotations from culture to culture, therefore, it is wrong to assume that since few Hungarians chose to immigrate that the same will occur from the other soon-to-be members of the EU. Second, there are significant differences in relative wealth between the ten countries slated from accession. If we look at GDP per capita (US$), for example, it ranges from $4,421 in Latvia to $13,974 in Cyprus, while Hungary’s is $8,033. Again, with this much difference in wealth, it would be hard to imagine that immigration patterns would be the same for all slated entrants to the EU.
West's Fear of Influx Puzzles Hungary, Financial Times, Christopher Condon, Feb. 24, 2004.
EUROPE: West's fear of influx puzzles Hungary
By Christopher Condon in Budapest
Financial Times; Feb 24, 2004
At the height of an investment boom in western Hungary in the late 1990s, multinational investors began running out of locals ready to fill their assembly lines and offices. Many cast their eyes to poorer eastern Hungary, where unemployment was as high as 40 per cent.
Companies such as Audi, IBM and Philips were sure they could persuade job-seekers to move 200km to 300km for well-paying jobs with a prestigious foreign company. But they were wrong. Even within their own country, Hungarians proved largely immobile.
As aresult, Hungarians are wondering what all the fuss is about in other EU capitals over the flood of workers and spongers who will supposedly arrive from eastern Europe when the
Union grows from 15 to 25 members in May.
Of current EU members, all but Ireland and the UK have said they will restrict labour from new members for up to seven years.
Karoly Gyorgy, an official with the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions, said the fears were unfounded.
"All the studies on this show the migration potential for Hungarians is about 2 per cent - about the same as in current EU countries," said Mr Gyorgy. "Frankly speaking, it's my perception that the debate in the UK is fuelled by politics and British trade unions."
Mr Gyorgy also pointed to recent news that, despite being more likely to head for Germany than the UK, Hungarians applied for only 638 of 2,000 German work permits available to them in 2003.
Beyond the fear of eager workers lie worries that thousands of poor Roma, or gypsies, will head west not for jobs, but simply for more generous social benefits.
Earlier this month, prodded by a rightwing press campaign, the British government announced plans to tighten migrants' access to welfare benefits.
About 1.5m Roma live in countries set to join the EU in May, including an estimated 500,000-600,000 in Hungary. Many of them live in squalid conditions with access to education and employment restricted by discrimination.
But Roma leaders and advocates in Hungary argue that those concerns over Roma emigration are also exaggerated.
"We have little indication there will be any significant movement," said Claude Cahn, programmes director for the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest.
Talk about a battle over immigration! Legal workers from the 10 EU member states set to join in May will receive full rights and benefits, but the "traditional" EU countries are placing some tough short term conditions.
Here is a good summary of the British dynamics leading to David Blunkett's decision to place restrictions on Eastern European immigrant workers. It includes some interesting stats on the economic benefits of EU enlargement.
This other extended Guardian piece highlights some of the debates (and last minute panic, according to the newspaper) that took place before the home minister said immigrants must, for one, register their jobs with the UK.
What these articles make clear is the xeonophobic views of some, and the balancing act governments have to make with regard to policies on Eastern European immigration. It seems practical to place conditions on guest workers, even if they are EU citizens, all goverments do, but those conditions should be fair and driven not by nationalist or xenophobic sentiments, but by sound policy decisions. But then again, if the EU is one fluid "body" why the restrictions on any citizens?
Benefits clampdown for new EU citizens
Michael White and Alan Travis
Tuesday February 24, 2004
The Guardian
David Blunkett last night bowed to pressure in the controversy over East European immigration when he unveiled tougher-than-expected restrictions on jobseekers coming to Britain after 10 new member states join the European Union on May 1.
In a move that won the applause of the CBI and the TUC - but set Britain apart from most EU states - Mr Blunkett insisted he is "balancing" the labour needs of a dynamic economy with measures to prevent "benefit tourism" and potential strains on public services.
But the home secretary failed to stem criticism with his announcement that he will restrict access to benefits for up to two years and require workers from so-called "accession" countries such as Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states to register their UK jobs.
On left and right, the government was accused of a last-minute panic. In response, ministers insist they will deport fraudsters and that - after 20 illegal Chinese workers died in Morecambe Bay - they are determined to stop migrants sliding into "the exploitation of the sub-economy".
Mr Blunkett's decision, taken in consultation with Tony Blair and cabinet colleagues last week, will mean that jobseekers from eight EU newcomers from the old Soviet bloc will have full rights to enter Britain from May 1 along with tourists and other visitors. But they will be required to join a workers registration scheme once they have found a job and will have to provide evidence that they are being paid at least the minimum wage.
New migrant workers will not be eligible for the full range of UK benefits - housing benefit, income support or council housing - until they have been in continuous employment for at least 12 months. Those who fail to find jobs will not be able to claim benefit for two years.
If officially sponsored predictions that no more than 13,000 a year will arrive from among the 75m new EU citizens prove wrong, officials stand by to follow France, Germany and most EU states in blocking new entrants, as EU "transition" rules permit, for up to seven years.
Emphasising the advantages of an open door policy, Mr Blunkett reminded MPs that the government welcomes legal migration.
"At the same time we have balanced this by taking tougher measures to clamp down on illegal working, abuse of the asylum system and clandestine entry," he said.
Yesterday's formula is less than the fully-fledged work permit regime which Downing Street, fearful of the xenophobic tabloids, had been urging. It is believed that Mr Blunkett's plea to the cabinet that if new workers were not encouraged to come legally they would come illegally anyway, clinched the argument.
The Conservatives backed work permits, as they warned of a flood of cheap labour and benefit tourists heading to wards Dover, some accompanied by children who could not be left "destitute" in the streets.
Mr Blunkett told his Tory shadow, David Davis, that work permits would be costly and bureaucratic, compared with what aides called his own "light touch" approach.
But he has been forced to embrace tougher restraints than initially predicted after last week's discussions at No 10. No paper registration certificate was then expected and benefit restrictions for those who fail to find work were thought to be likely to last 18 months, not two years.
· The Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, last night hinted at restrictions on benefit, after Ireland became, in effect, the only EU state with a wholly open door policy to migrants after Mr Blunkett's announcement. "We must protect ourselves from what could be an abuse of the system. That was always our position," he said.
Take a look at the new decision (well...in fact, no detail yet) of the UK. It looks like within the government there's also a lot of debate on whether or not to accept migrant workers from the new EU member states.
This is from The Guardian.
David Blunkett is to announce new measures on limiting migration from the new EU states after a day-long mini-summit in Downing Street on the issue.
The home secretary will brief MPs on the details in the Commons on Monday, with No 10 confirming nothing tonight other than that a "package of measures" had been agreed to prevent so-called benefit tourism.
The topic had become a hot political potato in the past fortnight, after the Conservatives challenged the prime minister on the fact that only the UK and Ireland had no restriction on the movement of workers after the 10, mostly poor former communist east European nations joined the EU in May.
Today's talks in Downing Street - conducted without any publicity from No 10 and during the parliamentary recess as MPs are away from Westminster - are a sign of the seriousness with which Mr Blair took the emerging issue.
They were attended by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, the home secretary and the work and pensions secretary, Andrew Smith.
The Tories had accused the government's policy of being in confusion just weeks before the EU expands with the entry of 10 new countries.
In prime ministers' questions over the past fortnight, Mr Blair indicated that the UK was looking at tighter controls to limit migration from the eastern European countries.
Mr Blunkett dismissed suggestions that would mean taking measures aimed at discouraging people from the new member states from coming to Britain to work, saying the government was in favour of "managed migration".
Tonight a No 10 spokesman said it would be inappropriate to announce the deal they had reached while MPs are way during the parliamentary recess.
"A package of measures was agreed. With regard to the timing of the announcement it was agreed that this should be made in the first instance to parliament.
"The details will therefore be announced on Monday by the home secretary."
The shadow home secretary, David Davis, earlier attacked what he called Mr Blair's lack of foresight.
"The enlargement of the EU has been planned for years, yet the government has decided to hold a crisis summit only nine weeks before the accession date," he said.
"They are rightly worried about benefit tourism, but that is only half the problem.
"With average wage levels in eastern Europe less than half the minimum wage, many of the 75 million citizens will wish to come to Britain irrespective of benefits.
"These crisis talks should also consider the impact on public services and whether local authorities will end up footing the bill."
Mr Davis said the government's immigration policy had been incompetent from the start and was a crisis "purely of their own making".
"Emergency meetings in Downing Street only nine weeks before the accession date shows what mess they are in," he added.
Mark Oaten, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "Blair's victory over David Blunkett surely signals the final victory for populism over principle.
"How can the prime minister call himself a true European when with these measures he has effectively created a two-tier Europe."
Earlier, John Denham, the Labour chairman of the commons home affairs select committee, said he hoped the government would take "measured steps" to prevent abuse of the benefits system.
"The danger we have got is that you don't need huge numbers of people being seen to exploit the system to create a great deal of trouble," he told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme.
He said ministers were being forced to act as a result of the restrictions imposed in other EU member states.
"If everybody in Europe had open borders from the beginning and everybody was running their work and benefits system in the same way, then any problem would be so spread around Europe it would be so small that no one would worry," he said.
"The more that other countries have decided to tighten up in one way or another, the more it was inevitable that Britain would have to do so."
An important summit Blair, Chirac, Schröder, will take place tomorrow in Berlin. Several European countries, Italy, Spain and Poland among them, are upset by the emergence of this new "directory."
After explaining the progresses made in the building of a common defense, this article taken from Le Monde sees the addition of the UK to the Franco-Germen duo as a way to appease some tensions. Their influence could be huge in many fields: commision, constitution, enlargement, etc.
It would be useful to look at how the summit is covered in different capitals and report it on the blog. Many of the issues at stake in Europe today should come up during the discussion, and in the coverage they get.
Le Monde - Un "directoire" européen à trois va s'ébaucher à Berlin
Un "directoire" européen à trois va s'ébaucher à Berlin
LE MONDE | 17.02.04 | 13h22 • MIS A JOUR LE 17.02.04 | 16h20
A quelques semaines de l'élargissement de l'Union européenne, trois de ses principaux dirigeants se réunissent à Berlin, mercredi 18 février, suscitant la rancœur de certains de leurs partenaires, inquiets de voir se mettre en place une gestion par Paris, Berlin et Londres. Officiellement rejetée par les intéressés, l'expression "directoire" ne les fait cependant pas hurler d'indignation. Refusant de limiter l'Europe à un espace de paix intérieure, les dirigeants français, allemand et britannique devraient envisager les moyens de relancer les réformes, la croissance et la politique industrielle. Ils pourraient aussi décider de réformer la Commission de Bruxelles.
A peine un an après la fameuse lettre des Huit sur l'Irak, initiée par la Grande-Bretagne et l'Espagne, qui scellait la césure entre une Europe pro-atlantiste et une Europe franco-allemande récusant la politique américaine, Tony Blair se retrouve avec le président Jacques Chirac et le chancelier Schröder, mercredi 18 février à Berlin, pour une rencontre tripartite. A deux mois de l'élargissement de l'Union, alors que la question du fonctionnement de l'Europe à 25 est loin d'être résolue, les autres Européens s'interrogent sur l'objet de cette réunion à trois, présentée comme une concertation en vue du sommet européen qui sera consacré fin mars à l'évolution économique de l'Union.
Malgré les apaisements prodigués par Tony Blair, jeudi, lors de la rencontre préparatoire qu'il a eue avec le chancelier allemand à Berlin, plusieurs capitales, notamment au sud de l'Europe, expriment quelque agacement à voir refleurir une sorte de "directoire", non plus franco-allemand, mais à trois. "Nous ne pouvons accepter les initiatives qui mettent les uns ou les autres le dos au mur", a averti le ministre italien des affaires étrangères, Franco Frattini. "Il n'est pas bon que quelques voix fassent taire toutes les autres, dont celle de l'Espagne", a estimé de son côté la ministre espagnole Ana Palacio, qui avait dénoncé avec virulence en 2003, lors de la célébration du 40e anniversaire du traité franco-allemand, la volonté d'hégémonie de Paris et de Berlin.
L'idée d'un leadership franco-germano-britannique en Europe n'est pas nouvelle. Elle avait pris corps après l'arrivée de Tony Blair aux commandes en Grande-Bretagne, le leader travailliste revendiquant ouvertement, après les années Thatcher, un retour de son pays sur la scène européenne pour y exercer son influence. M. Blair n'a pas été en mesure de tirer suffisamment son pays derrière lui pour le convaincre de rejoindre la zone euro. Il a cependant avancé sur d'autres sujets européens, notamment en relançant avec Paris, dès décembre 1998, l'idée d'une véritable défense européenne.
C'est à nouveau à propos de la défense que les "trois grands" Européens ont manifesté ces derniers mois leur volonté de tourner la page de la crise irakienne. Le 20 septembre 2003, le sommet surprise qui les a réunis, à Berlin déjà, avait esquissé un compromis sur la création d'un état-major européen autonome au sein de l'OTAN.
Ce compromis, finalement acepté par Washington, a été la base de l'accord intervenu au sommet de Bruxelles en décembre sur la future politique de défense de l'Union à 25. Il permet d'envisager de nouveaux développements à la fois en matière de projection de forces, mais aussi de coopération dans le domaine de l'armement. L'Allemagne vient de se joindre à Paris et Londres pour mettre sur pied des corps d'intervention de 1 500 hommes prêts à être déployés pour tenter d'empêcher des crises de dégénérer, comme cela a été fait en 2003 dans la province de l'Ituri en République démocratique du Congo.
UN SOUFFLE D'AIR
Cette entente à trois a aussi débouché sur la création d'une agence d'armement, qui doit permettre à l'Europe de mettre en commun son potentiel industriel. Symbole de cette avancée : la décision de la France et de la Grande-Bretagne de coopérer pour la construction de leurs nouveaux porte-avions. Des discussions sont également en cours dans le domaine des sous-marins, où le potentiel allemand est important.
Paris et Berlin avaient dû constater pendant la crise irakienne que, dans la nouvelle Europe élargie, ils ne pourraient plus à eux seuls être le moteur de l'Union. La main tendue de Tony Blair est donc pour eux bienvenue. M. Blair a donné des gages de sa fidélité aux Etats-Unis, et sa présence devrait rassurer les pays membres les plus atlantistes sur les objectifs de la rencontre de Berlin, notamment les Polonais et les Espagnols. On en espère du coup, dans les milieux européens, une décrispation qui facilite le déblocage des négociations sur la Constitution.
De même que le couple franco-allemand a été utile dans la "vieille Europe" pour cristalliser les problèmes et dégager les compromis, un trio pourrait avoir une précieuse fonction de défrichage. En Allemagne, la droite, qui a soutenu le camp atlantiste pendant la crise irakienne contre le gouvernement Schröder, milite aujourd'hui pour qu'une place soit offerte aussi à la Pologne dans ce cercle restreint.
M. Schröder, qui s'est largement inspiré du programme travailliste pour ses propres propositions de réforme en Allemagne, peut espérer, pour sa part, trouver dans ce nouveau forum un souffle d'air dans la phase difficile qu'il traverse. Une part importante des discussions de Berlin doit être consacrée à la relance de la croissance en Europe, aux réformes, à une politique industrielle commune et peut-être à une redéfinition des postes au sein de la Commission.
Il est peu probable que soient formulées de nouvelles propositions sur la Constitution européenne, pour désarmer l'opposition de l'Espagne et de la Pologne au projet qui est sur la table. Ce projet, élaboré par la Convention, est largement le résultat des compromis auxquels les trois étaient parvenus. La France, l'Allemagne et la Grande-Bretagne sont loin d'avoir sur tout des points de vue identiques, mais sur cette question ils semblent décidés à attendre que le mouvement vienne d'abord de Madrid et de Varsovie.
Henri de Bresson
This article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine (a German daily roughly similar to the Wall St. Journal, also known as the FAZ) reports on a visit by Angela Merkel, the head of the CDU, Germany’s leading conservative opposition party (the party of Helmut Kohl), to Ankara for meetings concerning Turkey’s candidacy for the EU. The meetings precede a visit to Ankara by German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder SPD party next week.
The CDU’s position is that Turkey should not be considered for EU membership at this time because of “excessive demands” placed on the union at this time because of the ten countries ready for entry. Merkel, however, suggested a “special partnership” between the EU and Turkey as a “third way” between full membership and no membership.
Turkish prime minister Recep Erdogan strongly rejected this suggestion, saying that politically and economically, Turkey has fulfilled the Copenhagen criteria of 1993 more than ten of the countries being considered for membership, and a special partnership was never part of the discussion and we’re not going to bring it into the discussion. He added further that EU is not a Christian club, but a society with the same political values. Merkel made sure to clarify that her party’s position has nothing to do with religion.
German Human Rights Commissioner Claudia Roth accused Merkel of classifying Turkey as a second-class state and warned the party not to misuse the issue of Turkey’s candidacy in the European election. The Turkish ambassador to Germany also cautioned against using the Turks and Turkey as propaganda for EU elections and stressed the importance of valuing the 40-year relationship between Turkey and the EU.
It seems to me that she is suggesting a NAFTA type agreement between the EU and Turkey, which wouldn’t be very positive for Turkey. I understand this to be a political decision to try to capitalize on negative feelings by Germans towards the large Turkish community in Germany, and that by suggesting a “special partnership”, she can sidestep the issue of German citizenships for Turks, already a hot-button issue in Germany.
In another article by the German paper Die Welt, they included a quote by Merkel in the headline saying that she doesn’t’ want 25 million more Turkish farmers in the EU. This article goes on to say that this number is vastly exaggerated and that figure is actually around 8 million. Interesting that the FAZ doesn’t include this quote and a quote by the leader of the CSU, the other conservative party, that Turkey has never been a part of Europe.
It’s important to understand that this position only comes from the conservative opposition in Germany (both the CDU and the CSU), but it would also be a mistake to underestimate their influence and strategy. I included the EU and Islam as a category, because I think Turkey's candidacy has become inextricably tied to his question that extends to things like the veil in France. I will try to find some examples from the Turkish-German press that address this theme and the what it means for Turks living in Germany.
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine - Freundlich entschieden: Merkel stößt auf Ablehnung
Die Welt - Merkel will nicht „noch 25 Millionen türkische Bauern“
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine
Freundlich entschieden: Merkel stößt auf Ablehnung
16. Februar 2004 Die Vorschläge der CDU-Vorsitzenden Merkel über das künftige Verhältnis zwischen der Türkei und der Europäischen Union sind in der Türkei auf freundliche, aber entschiedene Ablehnung gestoßen. Der türkische Ministerpräsident Erdogan widersprach Frau Merkel "in aller Offenheit": Er sagte im Anschluß an ein anderthalbstündiges Gespräch mit Merkel in Ankara, daß er eine "privilegierte Partnerschaft" strikt ablehne, wie sie die CDU der Türkei als Alternative zur vollen EU-Mitgliedschfat vorschlägt.
Merkel begann am Montag in Ankara eine zweitägige Türkei-Reise, um der dortigen islamisch-konservativen Regierung die ablehnende Haltung der Union zum EU-Beitritt der Türkei zu erklären. Begleitet wurde sie vom stellvertretenden Vorsitzenden der Unionsfraktion im Bundestag Schäuble sowie einem Vertreter der türkischstämmigen CDU-Mitglieder, Bülent Arslan, der dem Deutsch-Türkischen Forum (DTF) vorsitzt.
„Privilegierte Partnerschaft"
Die Bundesregierung bekräftigte hingegen eine Woche vor der Türkei-Reise Bundeskanzler Schröders (SPD) ihre Haltung, daß über die Aufnahme von Beitrittsverhandlungen auf der Grundlage eines Berichts der EU-Kommission Ende des Jahres entschieden werde. Berlin unterstütze die Reformen in der Türkei, die zur Erfüllung der Kopenhagener EU-Kriterien von 1993 führen sollen, sagte Regierungssprecher Anda. Die Erfüllung sei die Voraussetzung für die Vollmitgliedschaft in der EU. Der FDP-Vorsitzende Westerwelle sagte hingegen nach einer Sitzung des Parteipräsidiums in Hamburg: "Die Türkei ist derzeitig, und das meinen wir ökonomisch wie rechtsstaatlich, nicht in einer Lage, daß ihr eine Mitgliedschaft in der EU versprochen oder angekündigt werden könnte." Das habe aber nichts mit der Religion zu tun, "wie es von Konservativen erklärt wird".
Merkel und Schäuble stellten gegenüber allen wesentlichen Führungsmitgliedern der türkischen Regierung wie auch der Regierungspartei AKP - vom Innenminister über den Parlamentspräsidenten bis hin zum Ministerpräsidenten und Außenminister - die Position der Unionsparteien dar. Danach soll mit der Türkei nicht über einen Beitritt zur EU verhandelt werden, eine engere Kooperation aber auch nicht ausgeschlossen sein. CDU und CSU sehen als "dritten Weg" zwischen Voll- und Nichtmitgliedschaft eine "privilegierte Partnerschaft" zwischen EU und Türkei.
„Weder eine Montanunion noch ein Christenklub“
Erdogan widersprach entschieden. Die Türkei habe die Kopenhagener Kritrien politisch wie wirtschaftlich mehr erfüllt, als einige der zehn aktuellen Beitrittsländer. Von einer "priveligierten Partnerschaft" sei nie die Rede gewesen. "Es war nicht in der Diskussion und wir werden es auch nicht in die Diskusion bringen." Die EU sei, soweit er wisse, "weder eine Montanunion noch ein Christenklub, sondern ein Verein mit gemeinsamen politischen Werten."
Erdogan sagte, das könne die EU beweisen, indem sie die nun die Türkei "hereinnimmt". Er bitte Frau Merkel, "uns dabei zu helfen". Merkel stellte klar, daß die CDU die EU jemals als "Christenklub" gesehen habe. Sie stelle auch nicht Frage, daß die Türkei die Kopenhagener Kriterien erfülle. "Ich sehe die Probleme vielmehr bei uns in der bestehenden EU." Die Gemeinschaft sei derzeit schlicht überfordert.
Mit einer "privilegierten Partnerschaft", so argumentierten die CDU-Politiker, könnten alle Erwartungen erfüllt werden, die seit 1963 geweckt und immer wieder genährt wurden. Damals stellte ein Assoziations-Abkommen die Mitgliedschaft der Türkei in der damaligen Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (EWG) in Aussicht. Zwar dürfe dieses einst gegebene Wort heute nicht von der EU gebrochen werden. Aber es sei auch nicht einfach auf die aktuellen Rahmenbedingungen zu übertragen. Das Hauptargument Merkels und Schäubles ist eine drohende Überforderung der EU, die bereits in diesem Jahr zehn neue Mitglieder aufnehme und mit weiteren in Verhandlungen stehe. Es müsse gesehen werden, daß die Aufnahmefähigkeit der EU auch zu den Kopenhagener Kriterien zähle. Insofern sei die Türkei-Politik der vergangenen 40 Jahre "unehrlich" gewesen, weil falsche Hoffnungen auf türkischer Seite geschürt worden seien.
„Vorurteilsfrei und ohne unfreundliche Absichten"
Alle ihre Gastgeber reagierten verhalten auf die Vorschläge Merkels. Der Vorschlag eines "dritten Weges" sei "ziemlich neu" und nur die Meinung von Politikern der CDU und CSU, sagte Cuneyd Zapsu, Vorstandsmitglied der Regierungspartei AKP und einflußreichster außenpolitischer Berater Ministerpräsident Erdogans. Verhandlungen über eine "privilegierte Partnerschaft" seien jedoch keine offizielle Position der EU, auf die sich die Türkei einzustellen habe. Entweder gebe es Verhandlungen um eine Vollmitgliedschaft oder nicht, sagte Zapsu, aber "auf keinen Fall" um einen dritten Weg, welcher auch "von den Häuptern der Europäischen Union nicht gebilligt" werde.
Nach dem Gespräch mit den stellvertretenden Vorsitzenden der AKP sagte die CDU-Vorsitzende Merkel, sie glaube, daß es in den nächsten Jahren eine sehr gute Kooperation zwischen den beiden Parteien geben werde. Das Gespräch in der Parteizentrale der AKP sei ein "sehr guter Start für eine intensivere Kooperation" gewesen. Der programmatische Dialog werde intensiviert und auf der Ebene der beiden Generalsekretäre fortgesetzt, versprach sie. In dem Gespräch sei über die Ziele und das Programm der AKP gesprochen worden. Dabei sei für sie interessant gewesen, daß die AKP ebenfalls die Werte der Religion kenne, Religion und Politik aber als zwei sehr verschiedene Dinge betrachte, sagte Merkel. Merkel lobte auch die Reformfortschritte in der Türkei. "Wir haben festgestellt, daß es in der Türkei unglaubliche Veränderungen gegeben hat und daß diese unter Mitwirkung der AKP geschehen sind", sagte Merkel weiter.
Die Menschenrechtsbeauftragte der Bundesregierung, Claudia Roth, warf Merkel vor, die Türkei mit ihrer Haltung "in die Zweitklassigkeit zu deklassieren". Roth befand, Merkel trage eine Verantwortung dafür, daß "politische Brandstifter wie der CSU-Landesgruppenvorsitzende Michael Glos, das Thema Türkei nicht im Europawahlkampf mißbrauchen". Die Grünen-Politikerin wies darauf hin, daß Verhandlungen beginnen müßten, sobald die Türkei die Beitrittsbedingungen erfülle. Der türkische Botschafter in Deutschland rief Politiker und Medien dazu auf, "vorurteilsfrei und ohne unfreundliche Absichten" die vierzigjährigen Beziehungen zwischen der Türkei und der EU zu würdigen. Er warnte vor allem davor, im Europawahlkampf "die Türkei und die Türken als Thema für Polemik und Propaganda" zu benutzen.
Text: Her./ wus., Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17. Februar 2004, Seite 1
Bildmaterial: REUTERS
Die Welt
Merkel will nicht „noch 25 Millionen türkische Bauern“
Die Differenzen zwischen der CDU-Chefin und dem türkischen Ministerpräsidenten Erdogan bezüglich eines EU-Beitritts der Türkei bleiben
Angela Merkel
Foto: AP
Ankara - Doch angesichts des Zustandes der Europäischen Union sehe sie die Perspektive einer Vollmitgliedschaft „kritisch“. Gerade um der Türkei nicht die Tür nach Europa zu verschließen, habe sie Verhandlungen über eine besondere Partnerschaft vorgeschlagen. Die Türkei solle dadurch nicht zu einem „Mitglied zweiter Klasse“ werden.
Ihr Vorschlag für eine privilegierte Partnerschaft blieb in Ankara indes ohne Gegenliebe. Die stand auch gar nicht zu erwarten. Neben dem Regierungschef trafen Angela Merkel und Fraktionsvize Wolfgang Schäuble auch Innenminister Abdülkadir Aksu, Außenminister Abdullah Gül, Parlamentspräsident Bülent Arinc und die gesamte Führungsspitze der AKP.
Erdogans persönlicher Berater Cüneyt Zapsu sagte zu deutschen Journalisten: „Jeder Mensch braucht ein Ziel. Im Moment wollen 75 Prozent der Türken Mitglied der EU sein. Wenn wider Erwarten im Dezember nicht der Beginn der Beitrittsverhandlungen oder nur ein 'Jein' beschlossen wird, müssen wir uns ein anderes Ziel suchen.“
Die Verhandlungen würden ergebnisoffen geführt, und wenn sich nach fünf bis zehn Jahren herausstelle, dass die Türkei die Bedingungen für eine Vollmitgliedschaft nicht erfüllen könne, müsse man neu nachdenken, dann vielleicht auch über den von Merkel vorgeschlagenen dritten Weg - aber erst dann.
Zusätzlich zu der bevorstehenden Erweiterung auf 25 EU-Staaten noch ein Volk von 70 Millionen Menschen aufzunehmen, übersteige die Integrationskraft der EU, betonte Merkel. Angesichts der Haushaltsprobleme der EU und der hartleibigen deutschen Position „weiß man doch, was es bedeutet, wenn noch 25 Millionen türkische Bauern dazukommen sollen“, argumentierte sie zudem im ZDF. Die 25 Millionen Bauern wurden im übrigen in Ankara heftig dementiert - 2,3 Millionen landwirtschaftliche Betriebe und rund sechs Millionen Bauern sind die offiziellen Zahlen.
Erdogan: EU-Beitritt ist kein Wahlkampfthema
Mit Blick auf die Europawahl betonte Erdogan: „Die Türkei sollte nicht in einen politischen Machtkampf hineingezogen werden.“ Auch der Botschafter der Türkei in Deutschland, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, warnte davor, im Wahlkampf das Thema EU-Beitritt der Türkei in den Vordergrund zu stellen. Die Mitgliedschaft stehe derzeit nicht auf der Tagesordnung, sagte er. Daher sei es unangebracht, „die Gemüter zu verwirren“ und Polemik und Propaganda mit dem Türkei-Thema zu betreiben.
Zuvor hatte CSU-Chef Edmund Stoiber erneut deutlich gemacht, seine Partei werde das Thema EU-Beitritt der Türkei im Wahlkampf verwenden. CSU-Landesgruppenchef Michael Glos schloss einen EU-Beitritt der Türkei kategorisch aus. „Die Türkei war nie Teil Europas“, sagte er der „Schwäbischen Zeitung“. Merkel gab am Rande des Besuchs zu erkennen, dass die Union das Thema aufgreifen werde - aber „ohne Schaum vorm Mund“.
Erdogan vertrat die Auffassung, dass ein Beitritt seines Landes keine neuen Lasten für die EU bringen werde, sondern die Türkei diese mittragen wolle. Die Türkei würde die EU stärken. Hintergrund der Diskussion ist, dass Ende des Jahres die Staats- und Regierungschefs der EU über die Aufnahme formeller Beitrittsverhandlungen mit der Türkei entscheiden müssen. Zuvor muss allerdings die EU-Kommission einen Bericht über die Fortschritte des Landes bei der Übernahme der europäischen Rechtsordnung und in Hinblick auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung vorlegen. CDU und CSU sind derzeit nach eigener Einschätzung die einzigen Parteien in Deutschland, die einem türkischen EU-Beitritt generell ablehnend gegenüberstehen.
Der Besucherstrom in Ankara wird nicht abreißen: Für die kommende Woche hat sich Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder angesagt. Dieser gehört zu den Befürwortern eines Beitritts. WELT.de/dpa/AP
Artikel erschienen am 16. Feb 2004
This is a site that deserves some attention. It is a cultural webzine made out of several European cultural sites. The level of the articles seems pretty high, and you will find great articles on some key issues like diversity and identity.
The very fact that you have participants from different countries and the use of different languages in a same virtual space gives interesting clues on some of the trasnformations of Europe
Eurozine - Changing Europe: Enlargement, Identity, Diversity
The right of center Dutch Government decided to limit the intake of migrants coming from the 10 new members of the EU. The fear of a huge flow of immigrants runs high among today's members. Some countries, like the UK and Ireland are in favor of a free flow while Finland, Belgium and others want a certain control.
In this story we learn that the right favors the free circulation of labor. 19% of the population of the Netetherlands was born elsewhere (mainly Turkey, Marocco and the Caribbean). Migrants who will be sent back to their countries of origin will receive a plane ticket and a certain amount of money.
Le Monde - Les Pays-Bas limitent l'entrée des travailleurs européens
Les Pays-Bas limitent l'entrée des travailleurs européens
LE MONDE | 27.01.04 | 13h17 • MIS A JOUR LE 27.01.04 | 13h40
Le gouvernement de centre-droit a fixé à 22 000 maximum le nombre de ressortissants des dix nouveaux Etats membres de l'UE qui seront autorisés à s'installer dans le royaume. Cette "soupape de sécurité" vise d'abord les ouvriers polonais.
Après des mois de discussions, le gouvernement néerlandais a décidé, vendredi 23 janvier, de limiter à 22 000 au maximum le nombre de travailleurs issus des dix nouveaux Etats membres de l'Union européenne (UE) qui pourront s'installer dans le royaume. "Il ne s'agit pas de poissons et nous ne parlons donc pas de quotas" a indiqué, non sans une certaine hypocrisie, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, le ministre des affaires économiques du gouvernement de centre-droit dirigé par Jan Peter Balkenende.
M. Brinkhorst, membre du parti D 66 (libéral réformateur) affirme aussi que la libre-circulation des travailleurs, principe de base du marché intérieur européen, s'appliquera bel et bien aux ressortissants des dix pays qui intègreront l'Union le 1er mai. Le ministre était auparavant défavorable à cette mesure de limitation, réclamée en revanche par son collègue Gerrit Zalm, ministre des affaires économiques (VVD, libéral), qui avait évoqué le risque de voir les frontières néerlandaises "submergées" par un nouvel afflux de travailleurs étrangers.
Aujourd'hui le gouvernement de La Haye affirme seulement avoir installé une "soupape de sécurité" et il évite de parler ouvertement de sa véritable intention : se prémunir contre l'arrivée massive d'ouvriers polonais sur un marché de travail dont la situation s'est fortement détériorée au cours des derniers mois. Le taux de chômage atteint 5,5 % aujourd'hui alors qu'il n'a pas dépassé 3 % ces dix dernières années. Le Bureau central du Plan (CPB) a ajouté à la crainte des dirigeants en estimant que, faute de mesures de limitation, de 5 000 à 10 000 travailleurs d'Europe centrale et orientale tenteraient de s'installer chaque année aux Pays-Bas.
CONTRÔLE TEMPORAIRE
Cela a achevé de convaincre le premier ministre, qui avait rejeté antérieurement toute idée de "quotas" pour les nouveaux Etats membres de l'Union. D'abord calquée sur la position de la Grande-Bretagne, l'Irlande ou la Suède, hostiles à toute mesure de limitation, l'attitude de M. Balkenende est désormais proche de celle de la Belgique, l'Espagne, la Grèce et la Finlande, favorables à une politique temporaire de contrôle, afin de ne pas déstabiliser les marchés nationaux du travail, conformément à des dispositions négociées entre les Quinze et qui promettent d'être appliquées de manière inégale selon les pays.
La mesure décidée aux Pays-Bas sera appliquée, en principe, pendant deux ans, avant d'être éventuellement corrigée. D'ici là, les ressortissants des nouveaux Etats membres devront réclamer un permis de travail qui leur sera accordé sans condition, sauf si le quota de 22 000 travailleurs était atteint. Quelque 10 000 travailleurs saisonniers sont déjà recrutés chaque année, notamment par le secteur horticole. A l'heure actuelle, les ressortissants de pays non européens qui espèrent obtenir un permis ne se le voient octroyé que si un "besoin réel" de travailleurs étrangers est démontré.
Si le gouvernement est, comme l'opposition, divisé sur la politique à suivre, des organisations patronales se déclarent, à l'instar des courants les plus libéraux, hostiles à la mesure adoptée la semaine dernière, que l'une d'elles dépeint comme "un compromis typiquement politicien". Pour le groupement patronal VNO-NCW, la libre-circulation des travailleurs ne doit souffrir aucune restriction. "Nous avons besoin de ces travailleurs immigrés pour faire tourner l'économie", a expliqué un porte-parole de cette organisation. S'inspirant des chiffres du Bureau du plan, les patrons soulignent que l'accueil des nouveaux arrivants n'entraînera, à l'horizon 2006, qu'un surcoût annuel de 70 millions d'euros pour les dépenses publiques. Entre 2000 et 2002, les PME ont embauché plus de 60 000 travailleurs étrangers.
Le débat sur "l'immigration de travail" relance, en tout cas, la polémique sur la présence des étrangers dans le pays. Sur les 16 millions de Néerlandais quelque 19 % sont d'origine immigrée, essentiellement turque, marocaine et antillaise. Saluée récemment par une étude officielle, la capacité d'intégration de la société néerlandaise a pourtant été fortement remise en cause au cours des dernières années, notamment par le parti du tribun populiste, feu Pim Fortuyn - la LPF. Cette formation a pesé sur l'évolution politique du royaume, le gouvernement Balkenende prônant une politique plus dure en matière de droit d'asile. En même temps qu'il annonçait, la semaine dernière, sa décision pour les travailleurs des nouveaux Etats membres de l'UE, le gouvernement indiquait qu'il procèderait à l'éloignement de quelque 26 000 demandeurs d'asile d'ici à 2007. La situation de 2 300 demandeurs devrait, en revanche, être prochainement régularisée en vertu d'une mesure d'amnistie.
Les personnes devant être expulsées se verront offrir un billet d'avion et une somme d'argent, dont le montant n'est pas déterminé, pour se réinstaller dans leur pays d'origine. En l'attente, elles pourront intégrer des "centres de départ" a indiqué le ministère de l'immigration. Quelque 13 000 demandes d'asile ont été enregistrées en 2003, ce qui marque une forte diminution : 19 000 demandes avaient été introduites en 2002 et 32 000 en 2001.
Jean-Pierre Stroobants
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 28.01.04
Christian Science Monitor, Poland tightens eastern border as new outpost of EU
EU officials are nervous. They fear illegal immigrants from the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia will easily cross Poland's 800-mile border to enter Western Europe. The Monitor article underscores various challenges and changes taking place as Poland prepares for its new membership. For example, the EU is pumping millions into border security and Poland is introducing new visa policies. This story gives a good idea of the inside views as the country undergoes another major evolutiion in its turbulent history.
In essence, Poland is ditching its old best friends for a new playmate at the risk of local economies collapsing and the disruption of cross-border family relationships. I've seen few articles about the negative impacts of integration. Usually reports will focus on the benefits Poland will receive. Additionally, the border challenges add to an already tense relationship between western and eastern European member states over immigration, employment and identity issues.
Poland tightens eastern border as new outpost of EU
Poland and seven other Central European countries will join the European Union in May - and are under pressure to stem illegal immigration from their eastern neighbors
By Deborah Steinborn | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
TERESPOL, POLAND - The dense forests of this border area make a perfect cover for illegal migrants coming from the east.
Poland is bracing itself. It will soon become an outpost of the expanding European Union.
Last summer, a native American unit of the US Customs Service helped train Polish border guards to spot the telltale signs of crossings along the "green border" - broken twigs and branches, overturned rocks.
"Everyone wants to get in, legally or not," says Wojciech Woloch, an officer with the Polish Border Guard at Terespol. "A lot of people now see Poland as a stepping stone to other places in the EU. Patrolling is a lot tougher than it used to be, but I think we're ready with the equipment and increased staff."
Fortress Europe
Under pressure from current EU members to seal their eastern borders, Poland and seven other Central European countries that will join the union this May are cracking down to stem the flow of illegal migrants from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia as well as from regions further afield.
They're rolling out high-tech border controls and strict visa requirements for neighboring lands. Otherwise, the EU says, drug, weapons and human smugglers from Central Asia and elsewhere will find an easy back door into Western Europe.
Over the past two years, the native American Shadow Wolves unit has also trained border guards in Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia in an effort to help these new EU members.
Yet as a result of the increased border vigilance, the EU newcomers are shutting out border regions that share close family and trade ties. What's more, the effort could end up encouraging would-be migrants to take an illegal route to the EU.
"I used to drive to Poland every week to make money for my family, and it was no problem," says Stanislav K. "Now I couldn't even get a visa at the embassy. There's no work for us in Belarus, so what are we to do?"
Just before Christmas, he and two friends - natives of Brest, a city across the Bug River from Terespol - raised nearly $500 from families, friends, and their own savings, and paid a smuggler to help them get across. Now the trio is working in Poland, helping to renovate a Warsaw estate.
"We realize that even with visas, the flow from the east will be difficult to stop," says Jan Wegrzyn, a director in the Polish Interior Ministry.
"Whatever visa requirement or detection device we introduce, foreigners will always find a way around it ... nevertheless, we have to meet the standards of the EU."
EU officials stress that higher standards are necessary before candidate countries can join Schengen, a security system that has lifted internal border controls throughout most of the EU. While travel within the union is mostly passport-free under the Schengen agreement, movement into the EU is strictly controlled. For new member states, tight restrictions for local cross-border trade are also mandated.
For all countries about to join, that's meant a rush to revamp equipment, retrain personnel, and introduce new rules - while struggling to maintain relations with their non-EU neighbors next door.
At Terespol, the largest passenger crossing between Poland and Belarus, border guards self-consciously display brand-new night-vision goggles, mobile heat-sensor units, machines that scan the contents of vehicles, and cameras that can detect a person hiding in a dark place or at night.
Indeed, the EU is pouring hundreds of millions of euros into bringing its new eastern frontier up to snuff, from Slovenia down south to Estonia in the north. It will spend $184 million over the next three years on Hungary alone, helping that country to tighten its borders with four countries that have been left out of the union, at least for now.
Poland, with an almost 800-mile-long eastern border lined with forests, lakes and mountains, is among the EU's greatest security concerns as May nears.
"Are we nervous? Of course we are," says an EU official, who declined to be named.
"Just look at a map," says the official. "There are hundreds of miles of unmanned territory in Poland alone, areas with dense woods to hide in. For smugglers of any kind, this is paradise. And countries to the east - Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova - they have a bad reputation for illegal migration already, even before the EU expands."
Polish authorities estimate that more than a hundred thousand undocumented migrants from the two bordering former Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad already live in Poland. Many work at undocumented menial jobs on construction sites in homes and gardens.
In search of a living
"They talk about the drug and the sex businesses being imported from Ukraine, but I just want to make an honest living," says Irina, a young Ukrainian nurse with cropped blond hair.
Irina has cleaned houses and cared for sick Ukrainians in Warsaw for the past three years. She hasn't gone home to see her daughter since August. "I don't know whether I'd get back in again, and I can't afford the risk. In Ukraine, I earned maybe $10 a week if I was lucky, and it wasn't enough to feed my family. Here I can earn four times that amount."
In Poland, all visitors from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia have had to show visas at the border since Oct. 1.
Even basic tourist visas cost 30 euros ($38) or more and are valid for just three months a year.
A smuggling ring snared
The EU's efforts to crack down on illegal migration at the soon-to-be new borders have seen some results.
In mid-November, Hungarian and Austrian border guards broke two human smuggling rings that had helped an estimated 10,000 people from southeastern Europe migrate illegally into Hungary, then on to Austria, over the past six years.
In Poland, new passport readers detected several hundred faked documents at eastern border crossings in the past 10 months.
But the measures have isolated the EU candidates' ex-Soviet neighbors. That's been particularly problematic for Poland and Hungary, which have large ethnic minorities in those neighboring countries as well as long-standing economic ties.
"All my cousins, my niece, and my nephews all live in Poland," says Helena, a seamstress from rural Belarus. She's been to the Polish Embassy five times in recent months to apply for a visa, but hasn't gotten one yet. "With these new rules, I can only get a visa for a short time, just once in a year, and I have to show I can afford the stay. I feel like this is a new wall for us, one we cannot get through."
Concerned about relations with their non-EU neighbors, Polish government officials have argued at the EU for more lenient visa requirements for local cross-border traffic. In September, the European Commission proposed a new "local visa" for residents of border areas in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus who need to travel short distances into the EU.
Flexible visas?
The new visa, if approved, would be issued for people who have relatives or property on the other side; it would also help facilitate short- distance commercial travel between countries such as Poland and Ukraine.
However, the proposal is controversial among current EU member states, all of which still need to approve the plan. Meanwhile, some analysts say a dangerous division between EU and non-EU is developing nonetheless.
"People on the other side of those borders don't see what's going on at the policy level, or what the concerns [of the EU] are," says Heather Grabbe, a researcher at the Centre for European Reform in London.
"What they care about is whether or not their daily lives have changed as a result of the EU expansion," she says. "And they have. This new border is a big deal for Russia, for Ukraine, for Belarus. It's already disrupted trade and daily cross-border traffic, and it's kept them from seeing their relatives."
Experts at Poland's Institute of Eastern Studies say the country's cross-border trade with Belarus, Ukraine, and Kaliningrad also risks collapsing under the new visa regime. Though the Polish government doesn't track this type of trade, it estimates it totaled 700 million euros in 2002.
Migrants, meanwhile, say they'll take the illegal route into "Fortress Europe" if need be. Already smugglers have set up shop in border towns like Brest to tempt locals eager to get back to the other side. The smugglers are "easy to find," says Helena.
"You just go to the market and ask around, and they appear," she says. "They ask as much as 600 euros ($760) to get just a few kilometers over [the border] in a "fool-proof" way, and about 300 euros ($380) for forged passports," she says.
"I never would have thought of doing something like that before, but if I had the money now, I'd try."
The Guardian, EU rich and poor split over budget increase
EU president Romano Prodi is having a tough time convincing some member states that the union needs a spending boost of $270bn to fund its enlargement. It seems the 'rich countries' resent financing the union whose 10 new members are the 'poor countries.' The Guardian article previews a long battle to come on this issue.
The necons don't need an alleged plot to thwart EU cohesion - member states are well on their way towards dividing themselves if the drama behind this debate isn't exaggerated. And with financial problems in their own countries, plus the debate over identities, I wonder how such an expanded patchwork of nations will come together under an EU umbrella.
It seems though that the 'rich nations' need to take financial responsibility if they also want to take the helm, which they've indicated through their trilateral meetings. That's the price.
EU rich and poor split over budget increase
Ian Black in Brussels
Wednesday February 11, 2004
Europe's richest nations last night reacted with fury to proposals that would increase Brussels' budget to €143bn, a 25% increase on current spending.
In the first round of what will be a bitter battle, Germany and the UK rounded on plans for the hike, presented by the European commission.
EC president Romano Prodi insisted the increase was vital to finance the union's historic enlargement. He said the money was needed to boost economic competitiveness, create jobs, tackle immigration and finance the union's historic enlargement.
But the chancellor Gordon Brown and finance ministers from other leading nations, including Germany and Sweden, said the EU's budget could not soar when individual countries were trying to tighten their belts.
The argument flared after Mr Prodi defended the proposed increase to €143bn by 2013, an increase of €20bn.
According to one calculation, total spending could reach a trillion euros by the end of the next seven-year budget period. "The gap between ambitious high-level political commitments and the failure to implement must not be allowed to widen further," Mr Prodi warned.
The EU executive insisted any smaller rise would mean cuts in key areas and that the higher ceiling is needed to finance the accession of 10 new and mostly poor countries in May as well as Romania and Bulgaria two years later.
The plan was welcomed by Pat Cox, the Irish president of the European parliament. "We cannot run an ambitious Europe of tomorrow on an empty fuel tank," he said
The commission ignored warnings from the "gang of six" net contributors - Germany, Britain, France, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands -who are demanding that the budgets be capped to 1% of EU national income. Mr Prodi retorted in Strasbourg last night: "That puts numbers before the political project. It is like building a house by starting with the roof."
Yesterday's exchanges were the first shots in what promises to be a marathon struggle pitting rich against poor members, old against new and minimalists against integrationists
The showdown is not likely before next year - during the UK presidency of the EU.
This is an opinion piece from Der Tagespiegel, a daily newspaper in the Berlin area. It addresses the issue of EU countries (specifically Germany and also France and England) resisting higher contributions to EU coffers without concrete results for themselves, while still claiming to want a bigger and more powerful Europe.
The author contends that this lack of commitment towards a goal of either a more powerful Europe or a Europe with less money in the EU coffers and therefore less power, is slowing things down considerably. She says that that EU agriculture and development support for the new member states is a very realizable goal, but that first Germany has to clarify that that is indeed what it wants, and then be more involved in Brussels to identify areas where cuts can be made and then come up with a workable budget. The problem is that this may be an unpopular course to take at home, even though the long-term results are still desirable.
Here are some translated sections of the article:
“When it comes down to it, the heads of different countries always agree – we want more Europe. More Eurpope in research, more Europe in development, more Europe in foreign policy… and officially they still want more Europe, but they no one wants to pay for it.”
“In Germany at the moment it’s hard for people to accept that people should dig deeper in the pockets for more money while at the same time the EU commission is making increased demands for savings and economic reforms from the German government.”
“As a Nettozahler (disproportionally taxed country?), Germany is one of the few countries that gets less money for farmers and regions than they put in.”
“If they want to pay less, however, they have to say how the Eastern zone should instead be financed.”
“But Germany and its fellow disproportionally taxed countries lack the political courage to call for cutbacks on their own spending.”
Der Tagesspiegel - Mehr Geld fuer mehr Europa? Deutschland und die Erhoehung des EU-Haushalts
Vornehme Zurückhaltung
Mehr Geld für mehr Europa? Deutschland und die Erhöhung des EU-Haushalts
Von Flora Wisdorff
Immer, wenn es zum Schwur kommt, entscheiden die Staats- und Regierungschefs einstimmig: Wir wollen mehr Europa. Mehr Europa bei der Bildung, mehr Europa bei der Forschung, mehr Europa in der Außenpolitik, und mehr Europa für die Polizei. Weniger Europa bei der Agrar- oder Regionalpolitik kam nicht in Frage. Bisher war das kein Problem. Selbst wenn mehr Europa auch hieß: mehr Geld für Europa, und mehr Macht für Europa.
Mehr Europa wollen sie – offiziell – immer noch. Aber mehr bezahlen wollen sie dafür nicht. Das ist ein Widerspruch, denn mehr Europa für das gleiche Geld, das funktioniert nicht. In Deutschland ist es zwar im Augenblick schwer vermittelbar, dass die Menschen für Europa noch tiefer in die Tasche greifen sollen – und gleichzeitig die Europäische Kommission von der Regierung einen noch schärferen Spar- und Reformkurs fordert. Immerhin würde eine Erhöhung des EU-Haushalts auf 1,15 Prozent des Bruttonationaleinkommens, wie sie die Kommission fordert, die deutschen Steuerzahler erheblich mehr belasten. Das Budget würde zwischen 2007 und 2013 von 100 auf 143 Milliarden Euro steigen – jetzt zahlt Deutschland bereits 22 Milliarden. Als „Nettozahler“ gehört Deutschland zudem zu jenen, die weniger aus den EU-Töpfen für Bauern und Regionen zurückbekommen, als sie einzahlen.
Dennoch: Wenn die Nettozahler weniger zahlen wollen, dann müssen sie sagen, wie die Osterweiterung stattdessen finanziert werden soll. Sie alle haben zugestimmt – wohlwissend, dass die zehn Neuen mit ihren landwirtschaftlichen und wirtschaftsschwachen Strukturen die Agrar- und Regionalpolitik viel Geld kosten werden.
Sparpotenzial gibt es hier genug: Immerhin verschlingen beide Bereiche zusammen 80 Prozent des EU-Haushalts. Aber Deutschland und seinen Mitstreitern fehlt der politische Mut, im Agrarbereich oder bei der Regionalförderung zu sparen. Denn dann müssten auch die deutschen, französischen oder englischen Bauern mit Abstrichen rechnen – und die ostdeutschen Länder auch. Hier wollen Schröder oder Chirac also offensichtlich nicht weniger Europa.
Zudem haben die Staatschefs ihr Ziel, die EU bis 2010 zur wettbewerbsfähigsten Region der Erde zu werden, nicht zurückgenommen. Auch dafür plant die Kommission Milliarden für Forschung und Innovationspolitik ein, genauso wie für die Sicherung der Außengrenzen und die europäische Außenpolitik. Auch diese Pläne wurden von den Nettozahlern noch nicht zunichte gemacht.
Insgesamt gibt es also den Wunsch nach mehr Europa. Aber beim EU-Haushalt ist es wie beim nationalen Budget: Dort, wo es politisch schwierig ist, sinnlose Subventionen zu streichen, hält man sich damit zurück. Lieber unterstellt man den Bürokraten aus Brüssel überzogene Wünsche. Wenn man in beiden Bereichen an der richtigen Stelle sparen würde, wäre die EU-Finanzierung kein Problem. Die Mitgliedsländer müssen sich darüber klar werden, ob sie grundsätzlich ein anderes Europa haben wollen, eines mit weniger Geld, das dann auch weniger Macht hat. Das müssen sie dann aber auch offen sagen – und die Konsequenzen tragen.
According to this piece, it looks like even with the cooling of hostility over the war in Iraq, solidarity doesn't have a sunny forecast in 2004 for trans-Atlantic relations.
It is interesting to see the incipient divide between Germany and France regarding NATO involvement in Europe's defense. Of course the US would like to see expansion of NATO and NATO forces in Europe and Iraq, including Turkey. It still maintains US military power in the region while diffusing the interests of the EU (not to mention US military costs) and affords the US more leverage in Europe, particularly if the US endorses "fringe" candidates, like Turkey.
The German defense minister, Peter Struck, supports Brent Scowcroft's (who was actually the adviser to GHWB, not GWB himself as stated), assertion that, "unless NATO was Europe's explicit court of first resort in a crisis, 'we're on the road to destruction.'"
I find it curious that the article doesn't peek into this aspect and what may precipitate it.
In response to Roya's earlier posting about Germany and France's seemingly unavoidable involvement in Iraq, this piece speaks to that, with Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, offering the idea of a European-American plan for the Middle East. It sounds like he wants the European brain to kill Islamic fundamentalist terrorism with kindness while American brawn can strangle them with war.
But the U.S. still doesn't want its troops to die alone.
International Herald Tribune - News Analysis: For allies, well-tempered sparring
News Analysis: For allies, well-tempered sparring
John Vinocur/IHT
Monday, February 9, 2004
MUNICH A master of excess, Donald Rumsfeld sought this time to be resoundingly lukewarm. Asked just before the opening of the Munich Conference on Security Policy to describe the current state of trans-Atlantic relations, he said, smiley-faced, "fairly normal."
It was the moderate/cautious/mildly consensual public approach to Europe of the U.S. secretary of defense over the weekend. In an election year, a new round of insults and shrillness with old allies like France and Germany over Iraq and how to deal with the dangers of the world would not do the Bush administration much good with American voters, however little they may really care.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany, who emotionally battled Rumsfeld in the same hotel conference room a year ago, reciprocated with non-hysterics, saying, "We have to look forward."
Finished was the environmentalist peace-guardian binding himself to a tree of virtue. Twelve months later, for Fischer, the apparent futility of the French and German effort to turn Europe against the Americans on the Iraq war seemed to be a lesson well taken on board, if never to be acknowledged in confessional terms.
But all the willful moderation at the conference Saturday could not hide the mutual skepticism, or the degrees of mistrust and contempt, and plain disagreement running inches below the surface.
The doggedly civil exchange between security officials and experts about how the allies and NATO could combat Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and help install security and modernity in the Middle East came down to a tacit reconsecration of the Alliance's split between those who want to do and those who want to talk.
On the German side, there was an unusually open acknowledgment about "destructive jihadist terrorism with its totalitarian ideology" as the greatest global threat - but by American definition at least, no "do" on Iraq. Zero troops from us, said Fischer. After all, Germany's antiwar position, he insisted three paragraphs into a keynote speech, had been proven right by events.
Rather than offering antiterrorist fighters for the front lines, Fischer called for a joint European-American plan for the Middle East. Elevating talk to complete equality with doing, Fischer claimed that alongside security matters it was "of almost even greater importance" that "social and cultural modernization issues, as well as democracy, the rule of law, women's rights and good governance" get full attention.
Applause (moderate, in keeping with the conference tonality) and mumbling in the audience. Ulrich Weisser, a retired German vice admiral, leaned toward a neighbor and said, "That speech was from Venus," reworking the caricature of Robert Kagan's remark comparing American Martians with European Venusians.
Was Fischer prescribing a division of labor among the allies where the Americans went after the killers and the Europeans spread the peace and re-painted schoolrooms?
Former Senator William Cohen of Maine, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, formulated this thought more indirectly and elegantly by wondering, in a question asked of Fischer, how come Germany was not furnishing military assistance in Iraq if stabilization there was the obvious prerequisite to modernization, democracy and Mediterranean free trade zones. Another American asked rhetorically how the allies were to install dialogue and détente with a security threat that is clearly not open to them.
But the Germans were intent on appearing active and full of gabby initiative. While Rumsfeld stuck to saying that NATO showed "a good deal of life," promising that a Mediterranean dialogue would find a place high on the NATO summit meeting in Istanbul in June (and with a little more heat, remembering out loud that his audience in Munich last year included people from countries who said they did not care who won in Iraq), Defense Minister Peter Struck proposed that the Alliance commission a statement on its future at Istanbul.
He called it a "new Harmel report," a reference to a 1967 document that the then West Germany considered a legitimization of its policy of détente toward the Soviet Union. In a sense, Struck seemed to be interested in a reworked mission statement that would bring soft diplomacy an official and respectable place alongside search-and-destroy missions as NATO's zone of geographic preoccupation spread into the Middle East.
Without any elaboration, Struck also advocated "sensible complementarity" between NATO and the European Union's projected military units and coordination between the two concerning their "level of ambition."
What? For Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, that seemed to sound like very willful ambiguity. He said that it was nice to talk about complementarity and Harmel reports, but that unless NATO was Europe's explicit court of first resort in a crisis, "we're on the road to destruction."
Struck gave Scowcroft one of the clearest responses of the weekend. It rivaled Rumsfeld's remark in response to a Palestinian's question about Israel's atomic weapons: that if the Israelis had them it was because they alone had to deal with forces in the Middle East that sought their country's extinction.
"NATO is first choice for me," Struck said. "There's no doubt that NATO is in the forefront."
But that was the German defense minister. A high NATO official said that nothing of like clarity could be expected from France. Indeed, the French defense minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, in talking about the EU's defense efforts, succeeded rhetorically and without harshness in placing a larval European notion and NATO on exactly the same plane, mighty coequals in a world known only to the imagineers, in Walt Disney's phrase, of France's security-policy think tanks.
All these exchanges - their moderation and their more jagged subtext - wound up without discussion of at least three potentially raw and critical areas of trans-Atlantic disagreement.
In recent weeks, both Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Jacques Chirac have said they would like to consider arms sales to China. The U.S. State Department responded disapprovingly, calling this a very poor idea. The EU will probably be asked to consider lifting a ban on weapons deals soon.
At the same time, many in Europe, including a big segment of the Bush administration's conservative friends, do not like the United States' open pressure on the EU to accept Turkey as a candidate member.
They say American involvement feeds the arguments of those who describe U.S. policy as seeking to foil European integration. And they fear that with American strategic goals in the Middle East being of greater interest than pleasing Europe, the Americans will not find a way to back off from aggressive support of the Turks.
Most important, the willful courtesies of the well-mannered sparring in Munich left out the enormous implications of the administration's $401.7 billion defense budget for next year. Senator John McCain did mention in passing that of more than two million Europeans under arms, some 5 percent of them were deployable on really tough assignments.
But this was a weekend when contentiousness was not the intent. Considering the virtually unbridgeable gap in capabilities, nobody had the heart to smudge the occasion by saying that trans-Atlantic solidarity in 2004, to use the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's words, is just no longer a given.
International Herald Tribune
The home secretary of UK, David Blunkett said that UK needs new workers to boost the economy despite strong opposition.
This is another aspect of exploring the "identies" -- the more senior members of EU seem not very enthusiastic to welcome the immigrants from the new EU members states. Is it economic or culturally or both? It's worth some thoughts.
From The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Refugees_in_Britain/Story/0,2763,1143968,00.html
The home secretary, David Blunkett, has strongly rejected calls for Britain to ban job-seekers from states that will be joining the EU in May, arguing that Britain needs new workers to boost the economy.
In a challenge to groups such as Migration Watch, which argue vehemently against any kind of migration to the UK, Mr Blunkett told the Guardian that the government will welcome those who come legally to work in Britain.
Preparations are under way, he revealed, to encourage new migrants to go to Scotland, as well London and the south-east of England.
He has joined Jack McConnell, Scotland's first minister, in arguing that Scotland requires an influx of new workers for demographic and economic reasons.
The home secretary endorsed Tony Blair's call last week for a clampdown on fraudulent welfare benefit claims. But he stressed that this did not amount to an attempt to stop willing workers from the eastern European countries joining the EU coming here.
"We need to ensure that we can meet those big areas for unskilled employment, like low level hospitality and catering. This will be partly met by a sensible approach to the accession countries from May onwards," Mr Blunkett said. "We have said that employment is welcome because it is better to have it legally than clandestinely."
Mr Blunkett also told the Guardian he believes that the government has got to get to grips with the asylum issue. He believes the public is now willing to listen to the case for legal, managed economic migration, which he argues is needed to meet the requirements of the economy, particularly London and the south-east of England.
"We are now moving to a position where that is recognised and that is possible," he said.
The death last Thursday of 19 cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, at least five of whom were in the country illegally, has highlighted the terrible conditions in which many illegal migrants live and work.
Mr Blunkett said: "One of the sadnesses is that because they are illegal migrants they may have changed their names and tried to change identity in this process."
He said the tragedy reflected the importance of the steps that "have to be taken to protect these people from the risks they are forced to take to work in this country".
It is expected that one of the main tasks facing the new organised crime agency which he and Mr Blair are due to launch today will be to target the people traffickers and gangmasters who profit out of the trade in illegal migrants, who pay them thousands of dollars to get into Britain.
Mr Blunkett's emphasis on the potential benefits to the UK of legal migration from the 10 countries that will join the EU on May 1 stands in stark contrast to the policy being pursued by the other members of the union. So far only Britain and Ireland have decided not to impose any restrictions on new EU citizens arriving to seek work.
Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands say the migrants can come, but that they have first to apply for a work and/or a residence permit.
Mr Blunkett warned EU countries such as Germany, which plan to impose "transitional restrictions" for up to seven years on new workers from eastern Europe, that the move could backfire. "The countries that have said they will delay the right to work are those that are most likely to face clandestine working and entry. They have got very little way of stopping that, because people can still cross their borders and they can claim to be visitors."
He said the government had a clear position - legal working by the new EU citizens was one thing, but illegal or unjustified attempts to claim benefits was another.
"Those countries that are blocking illegal working will be just as subject as we are to fraudulent claims on benefit and we are determined to ensure that we avoid that. We will make sure that they can't."
Mr Blair sparked speculation last week that Britain was considering restricting the right to work for migrants from the new EU accession states after May, when he gave a loosely-worded reply to Michael Howard, saying the government was looking at "closing off concessions" to prevent the movement of new EU citizens to Britain.
But Downing Street later clarified the position, saying he was talking about closing down their ability to claim benefits, not restricting the right to work.
Ten countries, including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia will join the EU on May 1.
ANKARA, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Turkey told the European Union on Thursday it had been kept waiting long enough to join the wealthy bloc and said failure to open entry talks this year would spark bitter disappointment in the country of 70 million.
EU leaders are due to decide in December whether Turkey has made sufficient progress on human rights to begin what are sure to be lengthy and complex accession negotiations.
"In December, Turkey will be expecting the EU to make a decision on our common future. This cannot, should not, be postponed any longer," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told a gathering of Ankara-based EU ambassadors.
"Turkey has been put on hold longer than enough. To delay a decision, the EU has used up various arguments. Some of these arguments have not been to the benefit of the Union's own credibility," Gul said according to a text of his speech.
NATO-member Turkey has been knocking on Brussels' door since 1963 but only became an official candidate in 1999. Ankara has been irked to see former communist countries overtake it on the EU road. Eight such states will join in May. Ankara has often accused the EU of exaggerating Turkey's human rights abuses and other shortcomings while often giving other candidate countries the benefit of the doubt.
Many Turks suspect the EU does not really want to admit their country on account of its Muslim religion and large, relatively poor population.
IMPLEMENTATION
The ruling Justice and Development Party, which has Islamist roots, has approved a swathe of political and human rights legislation, winning praise from EU leaders. But they have also urged Ankara to fully implement the new laws.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer repeated that message during talks with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday, Turkish officials said.
They also quoted Fischer as saying 2004 would be a difficult year for Turkey and also for the EU, which he noted had many other pressing issues including a new constitution to debate.
Erdogan warned of a Turkish backlash against Europe if the EU refuses to open entry talks.
"We will continue our reforms whatever the outcome (of the December meeting). We will not deviate from the EU path. But if negotiations are not started in 2004 we will be in a situation that goes beyond disappointment," he was quoted as saying.
"We would not be able to explain this to the Turkish people," said Erdogan. He did not specify what Turkey might do, but Gul has said in the past that Turkey would probably turn its back on the EU and seek new partners if talks do not begin.
Issues of identity become very complicated in Europe when dealing with immigration. In the case of Germany and Turkey, you have a significant Turkish minority living in Germany (2 million people, about 2.5% of the poplulation). If Turkey becomes a part of the EU, how will that affect the German Turkish population? Will a changed legal status have an effect on people's attitudes?
In this interview, the Turkish ambassador has pretty strong words for what Turkey's exclusion from the EU would mean. They dont mention the Greece-Turkey Cyprus conflict here, but as far as I know, that's the biggest unresolved issue surrounding Turkey's membership. People would certainly argue that religion is a big factor as well.
From the weekly English edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Frankfurter Allgemeine - Turkish-German integration smooths cultural divisions
Frankfurter Allgemeine - English edition
Turkish-German integration smooths cultural divisions
Diplomat says both countries are democratic, modern societies, well-prepared to help minorities feel at home
The Turkish ambassador to Germany, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik discusses the integration of Germany's largest immigrant group, and Turkey's possible entry into the European Union, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
There are about 2 million Turks living in Germany. How well are they integrated?
I think that the integration of Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany over the past four decades has been a respectable success. There are now some 600,000 Germans of Turkish descent and about 90,000 mixed marriages. Integration is not a condition, but a process.
What can be done to promote and advance this process?
Naturally, it's not a one-way street. Integration depends on both sides. We encourage Turks living in Germany to open up and integrate themselves into society. But they must have the feeling that they're welcome.
In Frankfurt, some 1,000 Turks have taken out German citizenship in recent years. How do you judge this trend?
We support it. These people have chosen to spend their lives in Germany and so they should integrate and become good, productive German citizens - all the while not forgetting their roots. (Citizenship) gives these people a feeling of belonging. The same would apply for Germans who decide to live permanently in Turkey.
'There are people in Germany who say that integration has become more difficult in recent years. Compared to the earlier period, communications with the mother country are a lot easier, Turkish media are present (in Germany), and travel to Turkey is cheaper.
'I don't really buy that argument. The easier contact to the home country assures that the Turks don't forget their roots - it doesn't hinder their integration.
Is religion an obstacle to integration?
I would say no. But naturally there are people - Germans as well as Turks - for whom that is an issue. But Germany is a democratic, modern society that can also deal with religious minorities.
How strong are the fundamentalist tendencies among Turks living here?
It is a very tiny minority that one must, without a doubt, take seriously. Yet it would be a mistake and extremely unfair to see the Muslims here as part of this minority or to define them as such.
What effects would Turkey's entry into the European Union have on the integration process?
The relationship of Turkey to the EU is, in my view, a decisive factor in the future of this process. And that goes not only for Turks in Germany but for the integration process of all Muslims in Germany and all of Europe. If the EU gives Turkey the cold shoulder, all Turks, all Muslims in Europe will automatically ask, 'If Turkey is not welcome, can it be possible that I am not welcome?' The future of the relationship between Turkey and the EU will be a catalyst: Either in the direction of continued, less problematic integration or - and this would be something undesirable - in the direction of alienation.
Where do most of the reservations concerning Turkey come from?
They involve prejudices, a certain fear, a lack of knowledge - and a lack of vision. While the Europeans want to be a 'global player,' an EU that shows Turkey the cold shoulder can't play a global role. Only Turkey can be, in a sense, the bridge between Europe and other Muslim countries. Seen in this way, Turkish membership in the EU is a test case. When we, as a secular, democratic and Muslim society are accepted or rejected by Europe, then that will have long-term effects not only on the millions of European Muslims but on the entire Islamic world.
What are these prejudices you mentioned?
Behind the usual 'cultural differences' label a number of prejudices are hidden. These touch on religion. In every religion there are fanatics.
And what consequences would a 'no' have for EU heads of government?
It would be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to neutralize the damage resulting from a 'no.' Consequently, the decision in December will be taken between the possibility of continuing - in the interests of both sides - the further development of the relationship between Turkey and the EU that has developed over 40 years, and the risk of a derailment - with unforeseeable consequences.
The interview was conducted
by Peter Badenhop.
Jan. 30
Several questions come to mind, namely the motive of creating an alliance within an alliance. For regardless of their intentions, the "Big Three" appear arrogant. Is it a message to New Europe? Or is it only natural that these nations take the helm, as they've implied? What do you think?
Britain, France and Germany will meet next month to co-ordinate policy across an unprecedented range of areas, heightening fears among smaller states that the European Union is being dominated by the "big three".
From the Financial Times. Includes reactions from small EU partners.
Big Three summit heightens fear in EU
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin and George Parker in Brussels
Britain, France and Germany will meet next month to co-ordinate policy across an unprecedented range of areas, heightening fears among smaller states that the European Union is being dominated by the "big three".
Less than a year after the Iraq war, the leaders of Europe's three most powerful nations and senior cabinet ministers - members of the so-called "directorate" - will meet at a summit in Berlin in a striking display of reconciliation.
The February 18 meeting will involve five or six ministers from each country, in addition to the national leaders, covering employment, the economy, education, finance, social affairs and foreign policy, British and German officials said.
Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, Jacques Chirac, the French president, and Tony Blair, UK prime minister, have held several informal get-togethers in recent years but next month's summit will have a more formal agenda and structure.
The meeting is scheduled to last at least half a day whereas previous meetings usually took an hour or two. The ministers will meet their counterparts in working groups. The foreign ministers are expected to attend the summit dinner.
Jack Straw, UK foreign minister, this month said it was "logical" for the three countries to work together to steer the EU when it expands to 25 members on May 1.
British diplomats believe the Franco-German motor, which traditionally drove the EU, is no longer strong enough to propel a larger union, which includes many Atlanticist countries from central and eastern Europe. Last year the three leaders laid the groundwork for an agreement on a common EU defence policy while their foreign ministers took a joint initiative on Iran.
Last week Franco Frattini, Italian foreign minister, said in reference to the trilateral co-operation: "There can be no directorate, no divisive nucleus that risks putting European integration in danger".
Diplomats in Berlin admitted there was a danger of "irritation" in other capitals. However, they stressed that the summit would focus on promoting economic reforms in the three countries and was therefore in the interest of the wider EU. They said ministers could be involved in future summits if next month's event were a success.
Wolfgang Clement, German economy and labour minister, said this week the summit would reinforce recent co-operation between the three countries on strengthening EU industrial policy and on competitiveness initiatives, as part of the EU's Lisbon agenda of economic priorities.
Two policy papers drawn up jointly late last year by the French and British governments on promoting innovation and enterprise would feed into the discussions, diplomats said.
The papers, seen by the Financial Times, argue for a strengthening of the "innovation action plan" under preparation within the European Commission. The issue of state aid to industry is also expected to be raised, although this remains contentious.
The meeting is expected to prepare common positions for the March EU leaders' summit, due to focus on economic reforms.
Additional reporting by Robert Graham in Paris
Small partners fret as Europe's 'Big Three' unite
The opaque working methods of the London-Paris-Berlin axis has spawned worries among other EU members, reports Judy Dempsey
Published: January 29 2004 21:17 | Last Updated: January 29 2004 21:17
When Britain, France and Germany agreed last month to work more closely together on security issues, there was relief among the European Union's other member states and those about to join the union.
Many had feared that Paris and Berlin were more interested in pursuing their own special relationship at the expense of supporting the EU's enlargement or reviving the transatlantic relationship.
So it was with some enthusiasm that they greeted London's move closer to Paris and Berlin on defence, with Britain promising that any "enhanced co-operation" would be inclusive.
One month on, several countries, particularly Italy, Poland and Nordic member states, are watching with mounting concern the opaque working methods of the "Big Three".
One concern is how they will influence broader issues on future EU foreign policy and whether other countries could be excluded from decision-making. The other concern is that nobody knows quite what agenda Britain, France and Germany are pursuing.
"There is no transparency from the Big Three," said Janusz Onyskiewicz, director of the Warsaw-based Centre for International Relations in Poland. "Transparency is a must. The EU's foreign policy has always been based on consensus among all member states. Some issues are being initiated without debate."
Poland insisted it would not remain passive over how the Big Three made decisions, hoping Italy and Spain would also challenge the London-Paris-Berlin axis, but diplomats say that is unlikely. José María Aznar, Spain's prime minister, steps down from the political front line in March after domestic elections and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, is not seen as a reliable partner.
But other countries say that does not excuse the Big Three for bypassing Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, on wider policy issues. "If you take a pessimistic view of what the Big Three are doing, it is a slap in the face for Solana," said a Scandinavian diplomat.
Iran is a case in point. Last year the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany together put pressure on Tehran to accept stringent inspections of nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Italy, in the EU presidency chair, resented being excluded and, even though Mr Solana put a brave face on it, diplomats said he was being undermined. "When the three foreign ministers went to Iran last month, it would not have hurt them to take Solana. It would have given the EU a profile and the pressure on Iran would not have diminished," said Mr Onyskiewicz.
All three capitals deny they are undermining attempts to build a common EU foreign policy.
Instead, they argue that because the regular meetings of foreign ministers have become almost unmanageable with 25 countries, it has become inevitable that a few capitals should take the lead on some policy issues.
"That's all very well," said another Scandinavian diplomat. "But EU countries are not even being informed of the issues or decisions made, just when we are supposed to be finding ways of creating a foreign minister for Europe."
The right of center Dutch Government decided to limit the intake of migrants coming from the 10 new members of the EU. The fear of a huge flow of immigrants runs high among today's members. Some countries, like the UK and Ireland are in favor of a free flow while Finland, Belgium and others want a certain control.
In this story we learn that the right favors the free circulation of labor. 19% of the population of the Netetherlands was born elsewhere (mainly Turkey, Marocco and the Caribbean). Migrants who will be sent back to their countries of origin will receive a plane ticket and a certain amount of money.
Le Monde - Les Pays-Bas limitent l'entrée des travailleurs européens
Les Pays-Bas limitent l'entrée des travailleurs européens
LE MONDE | 27.01.04 | 13h17 • MIS A JOUR LE 27.01.04 | 13h40
Le gouvernement de centre-droit a fixé à 22 000 maximum le nombre de ressortissants des dix nouveaux Etats membres de l'UE qui seront autorisés à s'installer dans le royaume. Cette "soupape de sécurité" vise d'abord les ouvriers polonais.
Après des mois de discussions, le gouvernement néerlandais a décidé, vendredi 23 janvier, de limiter à 22 000 au maximum le nombre de travailleurs issus des dix nouveaux Etats membres de l'Union européenne (UE) qui pourront s'installer dans le royaume. "Il ne s'agit pas de poissons et nous ne parlons donc pas de quotas" a indiqué, non sans une certaine hypocrisie, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, le ministre des affaires économiques du gouvernement de centre-droit dirigé par Jan Peter Balkenende.
M. Brinkhorst, membre du parti D 66 (libéral réformateur) affirme aussi que la libre-circulation des travailleurs, principe de base du marché intérieur européen, s'appliquera bel et bien aux ressortissants des dix pays qui intègreront l'Union le 1er mai. Le ministre était auparavant défavorable à cette mesure de limitation, réclamée en revanche par son collègue Gerrit Zalm, ministre des affaires économiques (VVD, libéral), qui avait évoqué le risque de voir les frontières néerlandaises "submergées" par un nouvel afflux de travailleurs étrangers.
Aujourd'hui le gouvernement de La Haye affirme seulement avoir installé une "soupape de sécurité" et il évite de parler ouvertement de sa véritable intention : se prémunir contre l'arrivée massive d'ouvriers polonais sur un marché de travail dont la situation s'est fortement détériorée au cours des derniers mois. Le taux de chômage atteint 5,5 % aujourd'hui alors qu'il n'a pas dépassé 3 % ces dix dernières années. Le Bureau central du Plan (CPB) a ajouté à la crainte des dirigeants en estimant que, faute de mesures de limitation, de 5 000 à 10 000 travailleurs d'Europe centrale et orientale tenteraient de s'installer chaque année aux Pays-Bas.
CONTRÔLE TEMPORAIRE
Cela a achevé de convaincre le premier ministre, qui avait rejeté antérieurement toute idée de "quotas" pour les nouveaux Etats membres de l'Union. D'abord calquée sur la position de la Grande-Bretagne, l'Irlande ou la Suède, hostiles à toute mesure de limitation, l'attitude de M. Balkenende est désormais proche de celle de la Belgique, l'Espagne, la Grèce et la Finlande, favorables à une politique temporaire de contrôle, afin de ne pas déstabiliser les marchés nationaux du travail, conformément à des dispositions négociées entre les Quinze et qui promettent d'être appliquées de manière inégale selon les pays.
La mesure décidée aux Pays-Bas sera appliquée, en principe, pendant deux ans, avant d'être éventuellement corrigée. D'ici là, les ressortissants des nouveaux Etats membres devront réclamer un permis de travail qui leur sera accordé sans condition, sauf si le quota de 22 000 travailleurs était atteint. Quelque 10 000 travailleurs saisonniers sont déjà recrutés chaque année, notamment par le secteur horticole. A l'heure actuelle, les ressortissants de pays non européens qui espèrent obtenir un permis ne se le voient octroyé que si un "besoin réel" de travailleurs étrangers est démontré.
Si le gouvernement est, comme l'opposition, divisé sur la politique à suivre, des organisations patronales se déclarent, à l'instar des courants les plus libéraux, hostiles à la mesure adoptée la semaine dernière, que l'une d'elles dépeint comme "un compromis typiquement politicien". Pour le groupement patronal VNO-NCW, la libre-circulation des travailleurs ne doit souffrir aucune restriction. "Nous avons besoin de ces travailleurs immigrés pour faire tourner l'économie", a expliqué un porte-parole de cette organisation. S'inspirant des chiffres du Bureau du plan, les patrons soulignent que l'accueil des nouveaux arrivants n'entraînera, à l'horizon 2006, qu'un surcoût annuel de 70 millions d'euros pour les dépenses publiques. Entre 2000 et 2002, les PME ont embauché plus de 60 000 travailleurs étrangers.
Le débat sur "l'immigration de travail" relance, en tout cas, la polémique sur la présence des étrangers dans le pays. Sur les 16 millions de Néerlandais quelque 19 % sont d'origine immigrée, essentiellement turque, marocaine et antillaise. Saluée récemment par une étude officielle, la capacité d'intégration de la société néerlandaise a pourtant été fortement remise en cause au cours des dernières années, notamment par le parti du tribun populiste, feu Pim Fortuyn - la LPF. Cette formation a pesé sur l'évolution politique du royaume, le gouvernement Balkenende prônant une politique plus dure en matière de droit d'asile. En même temps qu'il annonçait, la semaine dernière, sa décision pour les travailleurs des nouveaux Etats membres de l'UE, le gouvernement indiquait qu'il procèderait à l'éloignement de quelque 26 000 demandeurs d'asile d'ici à 2007. La situation de 2 300 demandeurs devrait, en revanche, être prochainement régularisée en vertu d'une mesure d'amnistie.
Les personnes devant être expulsées se verront offrir un billet d'avion et une somme d'argent, dont le montant n'est pas déterminé, pour se réinstaller dans leur pays d'origine. En l'attente, elles pourront intégrer des "centres de départ" a indiqué le ministère de l'immigration. Quelque 13 000 demandes d'asile ont été enregistrées en 2003, ce qui marque une forte diminution : 19 000 demandes avaient été introduites en 2002 et 32 000 en 2001.
Jean-Pierre Stroobants
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 28.01.04
Charlemagne
Of wars and weighted votes
Jan 3rd 2004
From The Economist print edition
(How the history of conflicts between Germany and Poland has played an important role in the failure of the EU summit that should have approved the new Constitution)
The history and future of the German-Polish relationship
THE European Union was founded in reaction to the second world war. In many ways, its greatest triumph is that European leaders now spend their time arguing about fish quotas, not disputed frontiers. Yet occasionally memories of war bubble back to the surface. The recent deadlocked European Union summit in Brussels was just such an occasion.
That the central confrontation came between Germany and Poland was bound to stir up memories. But despite the tension, the EU could still claim to be exercising its civilising influence. This was not, after all, an argument about national survival. Rather it was a dispute between two democratic governments over voting rights, one to be settled by multilateral negotiations, not force of arms. The Germans want EU votes to reflect population size, giving them twice as much weight as the Poles. The Poles are leading the defence of the current system, which gives them almost as much clout as the Germans.
Berlin
Germany, Poland
The European Union
EU enlargement
The EU has information on the summit.
Poles usually make a point of not mentioning the war explicitly in any dealings with Germany. But they barely need to. It is implicit in their insistence that they will not be intimidated by demands from their bigger and more powerful neighbour. Asked by the BBC whether he was worried that Germany might make his country suffer for its obduracy, President Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland exploded that his country was not afraid of suffering: Polish history was about suffering.
These days, the German approach to Poland seems slightly less weighed down by memories of the war. This is new. In the tortuous negotiations over the enlargement of the EU, which took up much of the 1990s, Germany championed the Polish cause, making much of its need for an historic reconciliation with its eastern neighbour. When other countries mused that Poland might not be ready to join the first wave of new entrants, the Germans were always the first to insist that any EU expansion without Poland was not worth having.
Now that Poland's entry is secure, though, the Germans seem to feel that past debts have been settled in full. Indeed the new German refrain is that the Poles are being unreasonable and arrogant in blocking the adoption of a new constitution, even before they are officially inside the Union's pearly gates. (Poland, along with nine other countries, mostly from central and eastern Europe, will formally join the EU only in May, but all have been included in the constitutional debate as they will be full members when any new constitution comes into force.) Günter Verheugen, a European commissioner from Germany who handled the enlargement negotiations, recently fumed to the European Parliament that he now almost regrets all the efforts that he made on Poland's behalf. In the corridors of the Brussels summit one German diplomat was even heard to say, without apparent irony: “How can the Poles behave like this, after everything we have done for them?”
It is not just the Poles who are acutely aware of the weight of history. There was a distinct whiff of 1939 and all that in the reaction of British Conservatives to the way the plucky Poles had scuppered the EU constitution and “stood up to the Germans”. Perhaps the most tasteless comment in the summit's corridors came from a Swedish diplomat, who remarked: “Maybe the Poles could claim equal voting weight with Germany, by counting all the Poles that the Germans killed in the war.”
Not terribly funny, perhaps—but not entirely frivolous, either. Consider the reconciliation between France and Germany on which the EU was founded. The principle of absolute equality between aggressor and victim was clearly fundamental to the bargain. For over a decade after German reunification had boosted that country's population well beyond France's, the French continued to insist that the two should retain precisely equal voting weights. France formally abandoned this position only in 2002. “In the end you have to accommodate yourself to reality,” explains a French diplomat. “The Poles will have to do the same, eventually.”
Think national, speak Europe
The closeness of today's Franco-German relationship is often cited as a model for the future of German-Polish relations. But, whereas France and Germany have now had 50 years of working together in which to overcome old fears and hatreds, for most of that time Poland was locked away behind the Iron Curtain. The French and German leaderships like to argue that, partly as a result, Polish politicians are still fixated on old ideas of national sovereignty, while their two countries have moved on to a new sort of relationship, based on a fresh way of thinking that transcends such old categories as the “national interest” or “national security”.
To make the point that Germany is thinking of European rather than national interests in pressing for the new constitution, German diplomats are now recounting a key moment in the Brussels summit. Searching for a compromise, Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister who was chairing the talks, suggested to Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, that rather than moving to a voting system linked to population, Germany could simply have more votes within the current system: perhaps three more votes, giving Germany 32 votes, against 29 each for France, Britain and Italy, and 27 each for Poland and Spain. Mr Schröder dismissed this angrily: the point, he said, was not to increase German power, but to give the EU a more rational system of government.
Maybe so. But then a population-based voting system is even more advantageous to Germany. And, as one distinguished German chancellor, Bismarck, once put it: “I have always found the word Europe in the mouth of those politicians who were demanding from other powers something that they did not dare demand in their own name.”
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