A group of conservative leaders want to set a limit on Europe's outward drift.
On the fringes of a lacklustre European summit a fortnight ago, Bavaria's permanent prime minister, Edmund Stoiber, made an unusual point.
The 25 governments of the EU, the southern German leader said, had to "make clear where the borders of Europe are".
Expanding in every decade since its foundation in the 50s from a Franco-German core to embrace Iberia, the western Celtic fringe, most of Scandinavia, bits of the Balkans and, most recently, all of central Europe, Europe or the EU has never defined itself geographically.
If the contours of Europe remain nebulous, likewise the EU's end. "Ever closer union" - the formula used for decades to power political and economic integration - describes a process rather than a result. When is "ever closer" complete?
Bill Keegan, the Observer commentator, recently cited Robert Louis Stevenson to sum up this emphasis on process rather than finality that has been the hallmark of the EU: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
But Mr Stoiber has become a weary rather than hopeful traveller. His hope is that Europe is approaching journey's end.
He is not alone. The southern German Catholic conservative is joined by fellow Christian democrats currently dominating European politics.
Austria's Christian democratic chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel, presently chairing the EU, is hinting that by June Vienna might table formal proposals to delimit Europe's expanse.
"For the first time we are now talking about issues like Europe's geographic borders," he recently told Der Spiegel in Germany.
The fuzziness surrounding "the question of Europe's future borders" was fuelling the kind of popular disgruntlement that climaxed in the collapse of the European constitution in last year's French and Dutch referendums.
"We plan to forward our own proposals at the summit in June," said Mr Schüssel.
Assembled in the Vatican for an audience with Pope Benedict last week, the Christian conservative leaders again sounded fed up with a jellified Europe inexorably oozing outwards.
"A Europe without borders will become a subset of the United Nations,'' complained Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior minister and wannabe president.
It is striking and no accident that the calls to define the map of Europe are all coming from original member countries in the west and not from the newcomers in the east. The Poles, for example, are strident advocates of maximising the cartography by drawing Europe's border, if at all, on the Russian side of Ukraine.
The western Christian democrat campaign to define what and where is Europe has a trigger and a target. The trigger was the 2004 "big bang" expansion that added 10 countries and almost 80 million citizens to the EU. The target is another 80 million citizens - those of Turkey.
If ever there was a historical imperative in the EU, it was the 2004 "unification of Europe" that integrated eight former subjects of the Soviet empire from central Europe.
On the whole, though, the reaction in western Europe to this happy day has been curmudgeonly. After decades of controlling and manipulating the EU, the French conjured up the bogeyman of a ubiquitous, rapacious "Polish plumber" as a scapegoat for their own domestic travails and voted down the constitution.
If the French show every sign of losing the European plot, the Dutch dynamic has been different: that of a small country turning inward in rebellion against an ever bigger Europe in which it feels its voice can no longer be heard.
Expansion to the east played its part, however inchoate, in turning the core EU members France and the Netherlands against "ever closer union".
And ever since "the unification of Europe" in May 2004, successful attempts have been made in myriad ways to keep Europe divided rather than united: dilution of pan-European services directives, blocks on labour freedom for the east Europeans, promotion and protection of "national economic champions", direct gas pipelines from Russia to western Europe, leaving central Europe stranded and vulnerable.
Not surprisingly, a backlash is forming in the east. Poland, under the accident-prone national conservatism of the Kaczynski twin brothers, is fulfilling its potential as EU toublemaker. Hungary and the Czech Republic could follow suit if Viktor Orban's national conservatives win Hungary's election this month and President Vaclav Klaus's strong Eurosceptics take power in Prague in the summer.
In the campaign to finalise a map of Europe, the west European centre right has come up with an inelegant euphemism for Europe's borders: "absorption capacity". In plain English, it means "we can't take any more, probably".
This unhappy formula is now being built into the EU's pronouncements on the chances of applicants making the EU grade. It provides a caveat.
Eventually and realistically, an EU of 450 million cannot have a problem "absorbing", say, an Albania of 3 million, or a Croatia of 4 million, or a Serbia of 8 million.
But a Turkey of 80 million? Or a Ukraine of 60 million? Stretches "absorption capacity". Which is one reason why Messrs Stoiber, Sarkozy, and Schüssel want, for the first time, to define Europe's borders.
This entry was tagged with the following keywords: eu europe turkey integration
Comments
Please note: In order to post a comment you need to be registered and signed in for Guardian Unlimited blogs.
You can register here.
April 4, 2006 05:13 PM
Those opposing enlargement obviously have a short term point. However I remain to be convinced of why the EU should have an 'absorption capacity'. What is it exactly that new members like Turkay and Ukraine, joining in at least 10 years time, will prevent the EU from fulfilling?
The expansion of the EU has probably been the most successful force for peace and progress the world has ever seen. It has contributed in some way to the ending of dictatorships and autocracies in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Central Europe. It has been a vital factor in the recent Turkish reforms to their economy and the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. It has enriched us all both, culturally and more importantly economically. Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and dare-i-say-it, Britain have all reaped the benefit of EU membership in terms of higher growth and more stable economies (cue chorus of dissent).
To use Turkey as an example:
To include Turkey would help entrench liberal secular democracy in an Islamic state on the borders of the Middle-East. This is strategically vital - it would strengthen the EU politically, help show other countries in the Middle-East the potential benefits of liberal democracy and also demonstrate that the Islamic and western worlds aren't fundamentally incompatible - all without a shot fired.
Furthermore, the EU tends to project itself beyond its borders very effectively and, with Turkish accession, the rest of the middle east would, for the first time, come under the EU's sphere of economic influence.
It is also the moral thing to do - Turkey has made many reforms but the Kurds in the East still suffer political repression (they have only just been allow their first native language radio station), the massacre of the Armenians is a taboo subject and human and women's rights have along way to go. However Turkey wants to reform and needs the EU's help, the army want it to entrench secularism (against the threat of militant Islamicism) and the Islamic parties (including Mr Erdogan's) want it because they are wary of the power of the army (2 coups since 1945).
However, sadly enough, the very countries that are beginning to oppose enlargement are also the ones objecting loudest to the US using hard power to try and mould the middle-east - they complain that this can only increase resentment of the western world but don't want to use their greatest weapon - enlargement. They may be right about the US but they should at least offer their alternative.
I concede that there are enormous practical problems associated with enlargement but I beleive the gains far outweigh the costs.
France and others within Europe are increasingly turning towards insularity in the face of the challenge of globalisation. This is a futile policy born of pride and desperation - it is just so upsetting that we may end up its victims.
[Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.]April 4, 2006 07:52 PM
London/gbr'But a Turkey of 80 million? Or a Ukraine of 60 million?'
Yes, why not? We managed to absorb Poland, didn't we? And I agree with Molasses that Turkey deserves it. But here's something radical, taking Molasses' point a step further - how about offering Israel and Palestine membership?
[Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.]Please note: In order to post a comment you need to be registered and signed in for Guardian Unlimited blogs.
You can register here.