The sweet fruits of EU expansion

This is the text of a speach I made against the proposition "EU exapansion: too much, too soon" in the first DA debate of 2008 earlier this year:

A fortnight ago, Janez Jansha, the current Prime Minister of Slovenia, addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, as his country assumed the rotating EU presidency. This is how his speech began (and, please forgive me, my Slovenian is a little rusty):

"Today is a historic day. Slovenia is presenting the priorities of its EU Council Presidency in the European Parliament as the first new Member State, as the first member from behind the former Iron Curtain, and as the first Slavic country to lead the EU Council.

This would have been impossible without the profound changes that have occurred on the European continent in the past quarter of a century. They have enabled Europe to become united, in a Union of peace, freedom, solidarity and progress. All this was unthinkable for millions of Europeans only 20 years ago."

Mr Jansha was right. The past 20 years have seen dramatic changes across the continent of Europe, changes for the better. 20 years ago the European Community consisted of just 12 countries, and much of Europe lay behind the Iron curtain. In the 1990s, Austria, Sweden, and Finland were welcomed into the Union, and the process began of admitting states from the Mediterranean and the former Communist world, a process which culminated in the accession of 10 new countries in 2004, and a further two in 2007. In is on these latter enlargements since 2004 which we will concentrate today.

I will argue, that the addition of 12 new member states to the European Union, has been an undoubted success. Far from being too much, too soon, this wave of expansion was both appropriate, and timely. It has been a blessing for the new member states themselves. It has been a blessing for the old European core. It has been a blessing for the European Union itself. And it has been a blessing for stability in the world as a whole.

Mr Jansha listed the benefits of the Union's expansion as solidarity, freedom, progress, and peace. Allow me to begin by elaborating on the latter three points. "Freedom" might be a loaded term in American discourse. But the EU, by initiating a process of expansion, has entrenched electoral democracy in the region. It has entrenched the rule of law, and empowered its people with a breathtaking array of rights. To take merely the most topical, the enlargement of Schengen in December last year, enabled the citizens of Poland, the Czech Republic, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to travel west across the country without stopping at borders.

As for progress and prosperity, the region as a whole has seen breathtaking rates of economic growth, and millions lifted out of poverty. The Baltic countries have grown at an average of 7-8% a year for over a decade. The path towards open societies which these once transitional states have taken is of course one they have taken themselves. One cannot credit the EU alone with the rapid and vivid transformation of the countries of central and eastern Europe; it was a transformation effected in the first instance by their leaders and peoples.

But without the beacon of potential EU membership - without an open door welcoming them into the warmth of the Brussels hearth side, to whom, precisely, was the region was supposed to have turned? It is easy to take for granted the relatively stable and peaceful transition which the new member states made through the 1990s, and to forget that this was underwritten by the prospect of relatively speedy EU membership.

Take the example of Slovakia, which in the year before it formally applied to join the European Union in 1995 was placed by Freedom House, an American think-tank which regularly assesses global freedoms, in the 3rd tier down for Political Rights, and in the 4th tier for Civil Liberties. The process of accession to the European Union was instrumental in guiding Slovakia out of the semi-authoritarian years of Vladimír Mečiar, and aiding the government of Mikuláš Dzurinda in cementing Slovakia within Western European norms. Today, thanks in great measure to its European Union membership, Slovakia is ranked by Freedom House in the top-tier for both Political Rights and Civil Liberties.

The benefits of the recent expansion of the European Union for the old core have also been considerable, and go well beyond a sense of European solidarity. Western Europe, of course, has benefited geo-strategically through the expansion of the European Union through what was once hostile territory, and from the addition of new allies for Nato and EU peacekeeping missions. It has benefited from millions of motivated and educated new citizens to oil Europe's sclerotic labour markets - Britain alone has added an estimated 600000 eastern Europeans to its workforce. Western Europe has gained from the absorbsion of new consumer markets for European goods and investment opportunities - just witness the expansion of the Austrian supermarket Billa through much of the region.

The Union itself has been a beneficiary of its expansion. New member states forced the issue of institutional reform onto the table. 130 million new citizens have given the EU more clout on the global stage in securing trade deals and solutions to global conflict, and now, locked up within its borders, are some of the fastest growing economies in the world. This added clout bolsters its foreign policy, and it is the expansion itself which allows the EU to play what I would argue is its most important global role - its role of stabilising its neighbourhood. The EU is the vital adhesive which holds Bosnia together. The prospect of future Serbian membership, is the best hope we have of avoiding conflict over Kosovo. This would not be possible without the expansion of the EU over the last four years - had we cast into the wilderness those new member states who failed to live up to the highest standards, how could we now turn to to the Western Balkans and tell it "you, too, could one day be part of the EU". And without being able to say that, how many lives are we putting at risk? We cannot take for granted the stability which the European Union has guaranteed.

As Mr Jansha said, the last twenty years have transformed the European continent, a process which culminated in the accession of new member states in 2004 and 2007. It was imperative that the European Union adapt to these changes in a timely and appropriate fashion, and expansion of the last four years met these goals. To say that this expansion was too much, too soon, is to hanker after a divided Europe, a Europe of the past. Expansion has been good for the new member states, the old member states, the EU as an institution, and the wider world beyond. I'm with Mr Jansha, and for a Europe of Solidarity, Freedom, Progress and Peace. I trust that you, all, are too.

Thank you.