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The European Union And Central And Eastern Europe - Governance And Boundaries
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Danish Institute of International Affairs
January 1997
I. Introduction
This article explores the interaction between EU governance and its boundaries in the development of its relations with the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) since 1989. The end of the Cold War order raised important questions about the policy and geographical boundaries of the EC/EU. 1 It was pushed into a leadership role in creating a new European order: security, economic and political. The need for such arose at a time when the EC/EU’s internal governance system was tested by a combination of factors - absorption of a newly unified Germany, the end of the permissive consensus with respect to integration and the weight of its agenda, increased by the internal market project and its spillover effects. In the late 1990s, having embarked on a strategy of enlargement towards the CEEC, the question still remains one of whether the European Union can find a balance between maintaining its own system of governance and contributing to stability in the wider Europe.
Despite the almost universal agreement among European politicians (and, for that matter, academics) that enlargement will not only determine the future of Central and Eastern Europe but also what kind of European Union will emerge, the literature lacks an analytical approach to understanding this linkage. Classical integration theories, such as neo-functionalism and inter-governmentalism, have traditionally side-stepped the EU’s relations with non-members, focusing instead on the internal motors and brakes of integration (see also Schmitter, 1996, p. 14). Furthermore, as Smith notes ‘it is evident that there is an intimate linkage between the internal development of the EU and its institutions and the broader European order, which is not solely attributable to the interests, power or policies of major European states. Whilst some analyses have noted this connection, it is doubtful whether it can be accounted for simply within an inter-state or inter-governmental framework’ (Smith, 1996a, pp. 8-9). Conceptual works on EU external relations are not of great assistance either: although there are exceptions (Ginsberg, 1989; Hill, 1993; and Smith 1996a) they tend to mirror the distinction between EPC/CFSP and EU activities (Holland, 1991; Nuttall, 1992) and hence overlook the linkage between internal development and the outside. Finally, most studies on enlargement are empirical and do therefore not provide us with an analytical framework either (cf. Maresceau, 1997; Redmond and Rosenthal, 1998).
The key argument of this article is that the governance school of European integration can overcome this deficit in the literature by giving us the analytical tools necessary to understand the interplay between EU policies towards the CEEC and its internal development as a system of governance; its policies and activities and the politics of enlargement (Jachtenfuchs, 1995; Kohler-Koch, 1996). To-date, the governance approach has not been directly applied to studies of the external role of the Union (for an exception see Torreblanca, 1998). In fact, it has largely ignored questions of the extent to which the external environment affects the internal capacity to act, shapes the governance system or the implications of lack of ‘fit’ between membership, territory and functions in the EU. It is ironic that the application of a concept which assumes a blurring of boundaries between inside and outside (see below) has largely ignored or downplayed the significance of the ‘outside’ in shaping the ‘inside’. Equally, the focus of the governance school on territorial or political space within the Union creates the impression that the extent of EU governance is confined to its membership i.e. membership and governance are implicitly linked. This neglects the development of governance ‘beyond the EU’.
As argued by Hurrell and Menon (1996) governance provides a conceptual bridge between the domestic and the international. First, it allows us to focus on how the EU’s governance system affects its capacity to act towards the outside. It provides economic and political resources, authority and frameworks for collective decision-making. Second, the very concept of governance (which is not tied to a specific geographical territory) directs our attention to the significance of boundaries in its relations with the outside, and the CEEC in particular. The malleability of EU boundaries provides it with both opportunities and incentives to extend governance to its European neighbours. A re-configuration of the EU’s boundaries produces internalisation which impacts on EU governance itself. This draws attention to the politics of enlargement - to actors’ perspectives, interests and objectives - and to its consequences for ‘internal’ policies and activities (i.e. questions of who gets what and how in the EU) and the capacities of the governance system itself.
This article uses an analytical framework of governance, developed below, to examine how the EC/EU handled the interaction between boundaries and governance in its relations with the CEEC since 1989. This interaction has had significant effects on EU governance which can be traced from the point where the CEEC were treated as outsiders, in 1989, to a situation where, in 1997, they became ‘pre-insiders’. For the CEEC, this led to the gradual extension of access to the EU while, for the EU, it affected actors’ preferences, internal bargains and created institutional pressures. The article is broken down into three parts: we first present a framework for analysis, which highlights the dynamic between governance and boundaries and introduces us to the concept of internalisation. In the second part of the article, we apply this framework to the EC/EU’s relations with Central and Eastern Europe, and analyse the key phases in the EC/EU’s Ostpolitik from November 1989 to the Luxembourg Summit of December 1997. On this basis, the concluding section assesses how the analytical framework sheds new light on EU relations with the CEEC and enlargement.
II. A Framework For Analysis: Governance And Boundaries
EU Governance
The key claim of the governance school is that governance is no longer simply produced by nation-states but also by the EU in response to the need for ‘collective problem solving’ beyond the nation state (Marks, Hooghe and Blank, 1996; Caporaso, 1996; Armstrong and Bulmer, 1998). EU governance comprises of authority, resources, capacity to act and legitimacy. The authority to govern stems from the Treaties, accumulated policies and outputs of the EU (the acquis) and its ability to enlarge. Resources include regulatory capacity, financial instruments, access to markets and policies and the less tangible resources of models of political and economic regulation and co-operation. The EU’s capacity to govern is shaped by the interplay of actors and institutions - these actors are not assumed to be unitary. In fact, the segmented nature of policy-making in the EU permits actors representative of and within (i.e. societal actors) the member states and Commission to pursue a range of interests, sometimes contradictory, at any one time and to create cross-cutting coalitions (Torreblanca, 1998). This can also mean that tension between geopolitical and economic interests of member states may not be resolved at the national level but are filtered through EU decision-making channels. Hence actors may for geopolitical or systemic reasons give their agreement to broad policy guidelines or matters of principle in, for example, the European Council but may frustrate implementation in their defence of narrower sectoral interests when the details of agreements are fleshed out in subsequent stages of policy-making (Murphy, 1996, 260). Institutions include rules, norms and patterns of policy-making, institutional settings, such as the Council, and institutional actors such, as the Commission, which affect the member states’ margin of manoeuvre. Although the legitimacy of the EU governance system is contested, it is nonetheless an important issue, for example, in the determination of new policy competences, rights of representation and participation and enlargement.
The EU produces two distinct varieties of governance. The first is ‘soft governance’ and reflects the fact that EU governance is not limited to formal interaction but to the development of norms and values which condition the actions of its members. These concern a commitment to democracy, respect for the rule of law and negotiations which give the EU the character of a security community and civilian power in the international system.
The second kind of governance produced is ‘hard’ and concerns the process of governing through negotiations (Jachtenfuchs, 1995, p. 125). These address the system itself in addition to shared goals. Negotiations are not only determined by state and societal preferences in specific sectors and in the EU system, but also by institutions, rules and patterns of policy-making. A significant characteristic of this process is its protracted nature (Scharpf, 1988). Since the EU, as an on-going negotiation process, is always engaged in a number of negotiations, each negotiation is bound to touch upon historical package deals (the shadow of the past); parallel, ongoing games (the shadow of the present), and the prospect of future negotiations (the shadow of the future). As the EU is always involved in a number of games, it has difficulty in producing swift decisions. Indeed, as Schumann (1991) argues, a policy of postponement emerges as the dominant tendency. Moreover, there is also a tendency to ease decision-making by relying on the tool-kit of the past (path dependency) rather than embarking on strategic innovation (Pierson, 1995).
A second characteristic of the negotiation process concerns the quality of outcomes. Since the EU is made up of fifteen nation states, each with their own set(s) of interests, it operates on the basis of a bargaining decision style (Scharpf, 1988, pp. 258-59). Instead of searching for optimal solutions which reflect an EU interest, each member state views a given problem through its own set of national lens. This mitigates against strategic decision-making in that, in practice, a search for optimal outcomes is replaced by a search for package deals or side-payments which enable the key actors, the member states, to leave the negotiation table with a positive balance-sheet so that the outcome is sub-optimal. According to Scharpf (ibid, p. 261) there is however an exception to this general rule: if the EU-system is subjected to a shock, strategic decision-making may occur.
The above features of EU governance, we claim, also structure the EU’s interaction with its external environment. The EU’s external action 2 is based upon agreements first reached amongst its members - hence, external action is linked to an internal process of negotiations. In the case of enlargement, decisions have implications for the EU as a system of governance (e.g. capacity to act, the influence of individual states in the system); the politics of enlargement; and intra-EU politics (e.g. the distribution of costs and benefits, the geo-political profile of the Union). Hence, for each state, enlargement triggers a broad range of strategic concerns and affects the domains of security, politics and economics.
Boundaries
Boundaries are central to any study of governance: not only do they establish the limits of governance by defining the formal membership of the system, they also affect the system’s capacity to govern. They determine rights of access and participation and have implications for policy-making. However, rigid boundaries can exacerbate the disadvantages of exclusion and entice outsiders to accede. Accession, in turn, affects the ‘carrying capacity’ of the system or its capacity to deliver governance and remain relevant to the key actors.
We build upon the work of Smith (1996a), who uses boundaries to comprehend the linkage between the EU and the overall European order, to establish our framework of analysis. We argue that the malleability of boundaries creates incentives and opportunities to govern beyond the EU. The EU can maintain, strengthen, blur or move these boundaries in order to meet objectives with respect to non-members. Smith identifies four types of boundaries which are of critical importance to the EU-system - the geopolitical, institutional/legal, transactional and cultural (ibid, pp. 13-18). The geopolitical boundary refers to the fact that geopolitics produces a dividing line between insiders and outsiders. The Cold War, a given for the EC, created a rigid geo-political boundary around the EC which prevented close co-operation with the CEEC and clearly denied them membership. The absence of such a clear boundary creates opportunities for the extension of EU governance in the 1990s.
The institutional/legal boundary refers to the density of institutions and practices in the EU, its status as a community of law and promoter of civic statehood (ibid: pp. 15-16). Strictly speaking, this community of law refers to the constitutional order of the EU consisting of the ‘hard law’ of the Treaties, secondary legislation and interpretations of the European Court of Justice which set out the competencies of the Union and the rights and obligations of membership. The ‘soft law’ of the Union refers to inter alia political agreements and declarations. The institutional dimension refers to the complex set of institutions, procedures and norms which underpin the EU project. The overall character of the Union is such that core elements of the institutional/legal boundary are non-negotiable with outsiders: these concern bargains on structures, goals, policies and methods and represent a costly investment on the part of existing members. The resulting acquis communautaire, acquis politique and EU institutions cannot be easily shared with outsiders. This package constitutes the core of the EU governance system and a dilution of that core affects the capacity of the EU to govern (i.e. a dilution of membership requirements could create different categories of membership, undermine cohesion and prejudice the implementation of agreed decisions). However, the institutional/legal boundary is not limited in all respects to the territory of the Union: for example, EU models of governance may be exported through voluntary imitation by other states or by the conditional nature of EU external action which requires acceptance of certain norms and procedures by outsiders.
Smith’s third boundary - the cultural boundary - refers to the fact that culture and political values can also serve as a boundary between insiders and outsiders. Although not always clearly articulated by the EC/EU, this boundary refers to the political foundations which rest on support for democracy, respect for the rule of law and human rights and somewhat tentative references to common culture and heritage of its peoples. This boundary has always been permeable in the EC/EU’s self-understanding: during the Cold War it upheld what Judt has called its ‘foundation myth’ that it represented ‘the Europe for all Europeans’ (Judt, 1996, p. 42). The porous character of this boundary in the Europe of the 1990s enables the EU to govern beyond its territory while, at the same time, the attraction of the EU as a community of political values creates incentives to seek membership.
Finally, the EU maintains a transactional boundary with the outside by regulating access to its market for goods, services, capital and persons. This boundary may be eroded by an increase in traffic across EU borders and policy decisions which open the EU market to outsiders. By blurring the transactional boundary, through, for example, trade agreements with outsiders, the EU can provide governance without necessarily offering membership. On the other hand, the extent to which this boundary is eroded has implications for the achievement of agreed objectives and policies within the EU especially in those, such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which rely on tight external boundaries and clear distinctions between insiders and outsiders.
To sum up, the ways in which the EU handles its boundaries - maintenance, strengthening, blurring or movement - impact on its relations with outsiders. Conversely, these also have effects on governance in the EU. This interaction can be understood by assessing the internalisation effects of action at the level of the boundary where external developments and external actors become part of the EU bargaining process (Smith, 1994, p. 463). Internalisation creates issue-linkage when bargaining on issues of external policy becomes intertwined with decisions on internal matters such as financing or institutional reform (Murphy, 1996, p. 52). A blurring of the transactional boundary produces such effects e.g. increased access to agricultural markets can create pressures for CAP reform. At its most extreme point, EU enlargement internalises political space in the EU and, in the past, triggered policy and institutional reform. Such internalisation affects the investment - political, institutional and economic - of each member state in the system and hence, introduces tensions into policy-making. Whether the EU maintains, blurs or moves its boundaries will therefore in the last resort depend on its ability to strike a balance between the benefits and the costs involved for each member state.
Internalisation with respect to each boundary can have repercussions for others e.g. the opening of one boundary, such as the transactional one, can create pressures for movement with respect to another, such as the institutional/legal one. A focus on internalisation then helps us understand the interaction between governance and boundaries. The following section analyses this interaction in a study of the evolution of EU relations with the CEEC from 1989 - 1997.
III. The EU and the CEEC after 1989
Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the EC governance system operated within extremely stable boundaries: the Cold War established clear geopolitical and cultural boundaries between Western and Eastern Europe. Notwithstanding two rounds of enlargement, its institutional/legal boundary was not seriously tested. Since the communist regimes had limited interests in and scope for interaction with the EC, its transactional boundary was not permeated by, for instance, large movements of goods or immigration. The sudden, unexpected end of the Cold War, shattered this stability: the geopolitical boundary was breached and all the CEEC became potential candidates for EC membership. The cultural boundary became more porous as new governments subscribed to the EC’s values. Change with respect to the transactional boundary was just as significant: the Iron Curtain was gone and the EC did not have fortress-like qualities to insulate itself from, for instance, major immigration waves. The sudden change in these boundaries also exerted pressure on the EC’s institutional/legal boundary.
From traditional external relations to potential insiders: the Europe Agreements and the Copenhagen criteria
In 1989, despite its official policy of overcoming the ‘unnatural’ division of Europe, the EC was just as overwhelmed by the geopolitical earthquakes of Central and Eastern Europe as any other international actor. Suddenly, its own rhetoric of overcoming division in the whole of Europe was put to the test. Its immediate response was to provide leadership in coordinating the assistance of all the G-24 countries to the region (Pelkmans and Murphy, 1991). Already, before the escalation of political events in mid-1989, the EC offered trade agreements to the front-runners of the democratic movement, Poland and Hungary. It now acknowledged that these changes had affected the EC’s cultural boundary in its reference to support for the prospect of ‘restoring unity of the continent, whose peoples share a common heritage and culture’ (authors’ emphasis, European Council, 1990, p. 13)
However, the EC had great difficulty in developing a coherent policy towards its new neighbours. Indeed, it treated the CEEC ‘as part of the ‘foreign relations’ of the EC’... rather than as part of the internal relations of an increasingly unified Europe’ (Bideleux, 1996, p. 241). This was largely due to tension between the EC’s ambition of providing order in the new Europe and, at the same time, maintaining security within. The end of bipolarity had also re-opened the German question and, with it, the systemic issues of security within the EC. The member states were forced to give priority to Germany. This affected the EC’s Ostpolitik in two ways. First of all, it encouraged path dependency as, in a situation where it had to devote its efforts to Germany, the EC essentially offered the CEEC traditional association agreements instead of developing innovative policy-measures. The second effect concerned the method chosen to deal with the German question which was that of deepening EC integration. This deepening strategy could have been thrown off course by an early promise of EC membership, then a goal of many CEEC. Since failure to deepen could leave the German question unresolved, the EC did not include a membership clause in the Europe Agreements but agreed that they would have a ‘special value in themselves’ (Friis, 1997, p. 171).
At this time, the EC member states were also unwilling to launch a substantial re-think of the EU system through changing its institutional/legal boundary. 3 Despite the fragmentation of the EU’s geopolitical, cultural and transactional boundaries, they refused to change the position where third countries either remained fully outside or moved fully inside the EC. The member states rejected Commissioner Andriessen’s concept of affiliate membership, April 1991, which proposed a softening of the institutional/legal boundary to allow associated (European) states a voice in the EC’s institutions, but no voting rights in order to protect the integrity of the governance system. (Lippert, 1995, p. 227). Instead, they agreed to set up a multilateral ‘political dialogue’ with the associated states. Although presented as a novelty, this did not depart from the traditional boundary politics as it was no more than a consultative mechanism for the EC and the CEEC (ibid, p. 249).
The institutional constraints of the twelve-member, consensus-based governance system almost by definition inhibited it from developing visionary grand designs. This was made especially clear during the Europe Agreement negotiations: instead of offering generous trade concessions which were arguably most appropriate to CEEC market needs, cross-cutting cleavages emerged in the defence of sectoral interests from steel to potatoes to sour cherries and in resistance to resist large-scale financial transfers to the CEEC. Those states most concerned about stability in the region, such as Germany, also used the segmented nature of EU decision-making to their advantage and opposed significant financial support to the region, despite their earlier support at the highest political levels for the transition. As a result, the trade provisions of the Europe Agreements were sharply criticised as being too restrictive (Messerlin, 1992; Kramer, 1993; Sedelmeier and Wallace, 1996). 4 These evaluations do not however provide us with the entire picture of the EC’s Ostpolitik. By examining it through the conceptual lens of governance, the EC’s role was actually far more wide-ranging than the Europe Agreements suggest. Its policies were conditional on progress in building democracy and the market economy. In practice, the EC itself stood out as an economic and political model which the CEEC tried to emulate. This was most obvious in the process of what Nicolaides (1993) termed ‘anticipatory adaptation’ by the CEEC which meant that that while the Europe Agreements did not require them to adapt all their relevant legislation to that of the internal market, they unilaterally moved in this direction (ibid, pp. 236-237). The effect of this process was to extend governance beyond EC members without any corresponding softening of the institutional/legal boundary. Although it is difficult to balance the effects of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ governance against each other, it seems safe to argue that the role-model of the EC contributed just as much to European order in the immediate period after 1989 as the Europe Agreements. The break-up of Czechoslovakia illustrates this point: as both sides wanted to stay EC-fähig (and indeed also NATO-fähig) they took great care to settle their differences peacefully and repeatedly referred to EC-related texts in handling their divorce.
In the immediate period after November 1989, the EC hoped that the Europe Agreements, which mainly affected the transactional boundary, would constitute a long-term policy towards the region. In practice, this strategy proved short-lived. Already, before the Europe Agreements had been formally ratified, the EC, at the Copenhagen Summit of June 1993, launched a major policy change by making an explicit link between the European security order and membership. This acknowledged the fact that only by moving its institutional/legal boundary could it provide stability in Europe and security for its own members. The change of heart begs the question of why the EC suddenly substituted association with full membership as the key instrument for creating stability. Part of the explanation lies in external factors - the deteriorating security environment led to constant pressure from the CEEC for a clear commitment to their EC membership at a time when they also sought security guarantees from NATO. This also led states on the periphery of the EC, especially Germany, to conclude that the alteration of the EC’s geopolitical and transactional boundaries demanded a major response on the institutional/legal front. Precisely because the EC could not protect itself against the spillover effects of political instability or conflict along its borders, it had to increase its engagement with the region with a view to stabilising it. Although this objective could possibly have been achieved through means below the membership line, the countries in close geographical proximity to the CEEC chose to internalise the challenge by linking regional stability to full membership. Paradoxically, this triggered a political commitment to (eventually) accommodate newcomers in the EC governance system which, to a much greater extent, threatened the very governance system which the member states had heretofore sought to protect. However, this was mitigated by the requirement that the EU itself should be able to absorb new members (see below). This meant that some ambivalence still remained concerning the commitment to Eastern enlargement.
The change in EC policy was also closely connected to the EC process of governance. As indicated earlier, the EC is at any time engaged in negotiations at a number of tables, which often influence each other. By mid-1993, the parallel negotiations on German unification, ratification of the Maastricht Treaty and negotiations on the financial perspectives (Delors II), which had prevented the opening of enlargement negotiations with the EFTA states, had been settled. Still, the sceptical member states, whilst supporting enlargement on security grounds, had to be convinced that enlargement to the East would not jeopardise the governance system and their present investment in it. For example, France feared that enlargement would lead to a dilution of the governance system and trigger German domination. States like Spain and Portugal were most concerned about the internal political repercussions of enlargement i.e. the possible loss of access to EC cohesion funds and a geopolitical shift of the EC from the Mediterranean to the East, while systemic concerns about the influence of small states in an enlarged EU were of priority to the Benelux countries. The instrument of the package-deal enabled a compromise to be reached between the enlargement-enthusiasts (Germany, Denmark and the UK) who obtained the membership promise and the sceptics (France, Spain, Portugal and Greece) who linked this to vaguely defined entry conditions. These conditions included one which focused specifically on the tension between the EC’s governance system and stability in Europe - enlargement could only take place if the absorption of new members did not undermine the momentum of the integration process (European Council, 1993). Also, the membership package included EC approval of French Prime Minister Balladur’s idea of the Stability Pact which sought to ensure that the CEEC would resolve problems concerning minorities and borders prior accession. Here, the fear of internalising un-resolved minority problems led to new policy instruments to address security issues along EU borders. This, and the Copenhagen summit decision to offer the prospect of membership to all European associated states were attempts to limit the disintegrative potential of EC enlargement for the wider Europe (a decision to offer membership to only a few CEEC could be perceived by those excluded states as a re-drawing of geo-political and cultural boundaries).
From Potential Insiders to Pre-Ins: From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, July 1997
As already indicated the high internalisation costs of actually moving the institutional boundary led to common agreement to govern through the prospect of membership. At the European Council in Essen in December 1994, this overall policy saw the emergence of a pre-accession strategy for the CEEC. In effect, this strategy was a one-sided adjustment programme which outlined many of the key tasks to be undertaken in order to secure membership. Prescriptions for EC preparations were restricted to policy and budgetary reviews while the institutional implications would be tackled in the (then) forthcoming 1996 Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC).
The pre-accession strategy did not modify the EU’s traditional institutional/legal boundary. The ‘structured dialogue’ provided for a more regular schedule of meetings between EC ministers and their CEEC counterparts under the three EU pillars without any prospect of decision-shaping powers for the latter. Just like its predecessor, political dialogue, the distinction between insiders and outsiders was maintained. The CEEC were presented with a detailed White Paper on adaptation to the internal market. This was a novel instrument of extra-territorial governance as it urged outsiders to align themselves with EU legislation. Taken together, the implementation of the White Paper, the on-going processes of market liberalisation and regulation across the EU/CEEC area and the opening of EU programmes and activities to the CEEC blurred the transactional boundary between the EU and the wider Europe. 5 The pre-accession strategy also emerged as part of a package-deal agreed by the European Council. This time the package focused on finding a balance between the two key geopolitical concerns of the member states: instability and the spillover effects of immigration from the East and the South. At the Cannes Summit in June 1995, a French-led coalition was able to trade its acceptance for more economic aid to the East with an improved aid-package for the Maghreb. This package also illuminated the relationship between the EU and wider European security: the EU was drawn deeper and deeper into the task of building security in Europe simply because each member state bordering on the periphery insisted on measures to enhance stability in its neighbourhood.
The Madrid Summit, December 1995, moved one step closer to enlargement. It agreed to begin the preparatory phase of accession negotiations six months after the end of the IGC. However, the tension between maintaining the EU governance system, contributing to the overall security order in Europe and containing the internal costs of enlargement re-surfaced in Chancellor Kohl's trial balloon at the Summit to limit this promise to the ‘avant-garde’ of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (Financial Times, 14 December 1995; authors’ interview Bonn, April 1997). 6 Such a move, it was argued, would reduce the need for institutional change and either postpone reforms or diminish the impact on the CAP, EU finances and structural policies (i.e. a ‘small’ enlargement to three or four states - even with the only large state, Poland in the first round - would arguably have less acute internalisation effects). This was very attractive to Kohl - against the background of mounting opposition amongst policy-makers and politicians (including in the Lander) to Germany’s Zahlmeister-role, increased scepticism about far-reaching institutional change and concerns about the policy effects of enlargement. Furthermore, a small enlargement would also meet Germany’s immediate security interests of stabilising its Eastern borders. 7 It should however also be said that Kohl’s thinking was influenced by a general fear that enlargement to all the CEEC would render the entire enlargement process unmanageable - primarily because the EU would have to negotiate simultaneously with eleven countries (including Cyprus, author’s interview, Bonn; April 1997). However, consideration of the concerns of other member states and fears of creating new geo-political boundaries between the CEEC (at this stage in the process) outweighed Kohl’s ideas and the Madrid summit concluded that all membership applications would be treated on their own merits.
The prospect of enlargement raised the question of the capacity of the negotiations six months after the end of the EU to absorb new members, an issue which the 1996 IGC was mandated to address. The mandate for the IGC and the decision to also review the CAP before actual enlargement underlines the fact that the mindsets of the EU actors had changed: the CEEC played a central part in insiders’ calculations even before actual enlargement occurred. 8 The IGC, which was concluded at Amsterdam in June 1997, failed to agree the necessary institutional changes for enlargement and postponed agreement on such to yet another IGC - it simply allowed the process of enlargement to continue. Considering our framework for analysis this is not surprising: the process of governance through negotiations creates an in-built tendency to postpone decisions until the very last minute or until crisis occurs. Since even the accession of the most advanced applicants was not around the corner, it was therefore quite natural for the member states to postpone difficult decisions on institutional reform. 9 This was reinforced by the fact that such decisions went to the heart of the balance between small and large member states, and that, at this time, in 1997, the priority issues on the EU agenda were EMU and employment. The lack of progress on institutional reform highlighted the inherent tension between maintaining the present system of governance and extending it to the East. The IGC was deliberately insulated from the politics of enlargement and internal adjustment. States such as France and Germany feared that issue-linkage, a tactic central to the package-deal, could see trade-offs between, for example, institutional change and reform of the CAP. Precisely in order to avoid such trade-offs, the IGC was mandated to confine itself to institutional change and not to discuss policy reform (e.g. CAP and structural policy). Nonetheless, the prospect of enlargement did influence the IGC and the Amsterdam Treaty which it agreed. New Treaty provisions (Art. F) gave fuller expression to the normative dimension of EU governance by explicitly setting out the democratic values to which its members are committed and by providing for the suspension of membership rights should these be persistently violated by any member state (Art. F.1). Of equal significance was the incorporation of the Schengen acquis into the new Treaty. 10 In principle, this strengthens the EU’s institutional/legal boundary. Precisely because the CEEC exercised weak controls at their borders, it was feared that they could become transit states for crime, drug-trafficking and immigration and prejudice EU efforts to tackle such in the future. Hence, the inclusion of Schengen in the acquis would strengthen the Union’s capacity to establish tighter controls at its external borders. The EU could then make clear linkage between the applicants’ ability to control their borders and accession.
The End of the Beginning - From Pre-Ins to actual Members? (Agenda 2000 and the Luxembourg Summit, December 1997)
By 1997, by attempting to protect its own governance system, the EU maneuvered itself into a cul-de-sac: having offered full membership, it would eventually be forced to deliver on its promises - a delivery which would require a substantial reform of its governance system. Internal negotiations now centered on the number, composition and modalities of a first wave of enlargement. At first sight, it appeared as if the logjam could be broken by launching a small enlargement but, as seen above, this could have negative security repercussions. This was compounded by the fact that NATO, in July 1997, agreed to embark on a first, small enlargement with Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, thereby creating the prospect of a ‘dual-rejection shock’ for those applicants omitted from the first waves of both NATO and EU enlargement. A small enlargement could also be perceived as re-drawing the old cultural boundary of Western Christendom (Wallace, 1995-96, p. 162).
The publication of the Commission’s Agenda 2000 in July 1997 provided a clearer picture of how the EU could proceed (Agenda 2000, 1997): it proposed that enlargement negotiations should be opened with five CEEC (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia) and Cyprus whilst other candidates would move towards membership with the aid of a strengthened pre-accession strategy. Increased emphasis was placed on the readiness of applicants to implement the Union acquis upon accession - this would also (at least in the short-term) limit numbers and minimise internalisation costs. Moreover, the Commission, aware of member state resistance to major financial transfers to the East put forward modest proposals for such. Hence, only those five CEEC were deemed to be close to meeting the EU’s high thresholds for membership in the medium-term and still had much work to do. At the subsequent Luxembourg European Council, December 1997, this selection of the called 5+1 did not carry the day. Instead, a compromise between the two dominant models - the ‘regatta’ and the ‘group model’ - was struck. In the run up to the Summit, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Italy proposed the regatta model of launching enlargement negotiations with all eleven applicants so as to avoid drawing new geopolitical boundaries across Europe. 11 France, Germany, the UK and Benelux, conversely, argued that it was best to start with those countries which were most ‘fit’ for membership (group model).
A compromise was reached on launching enlargement as a ‘comprehensive, inclusive and ongoing process’, to take place in stages and to involve the CEEC, Cyprus and Turkey. An accession process would be opened with respect to the CEEC and Cyprus involving two key stages - preparations for accession and actual accession negotiations on entry conditions and treaty adjustments (European Council, 1997 point 27). Only those six states identified by the Commission could begin the accession negotiations in Spring 1998. The remaining five CEEC applicants would have to engage in further preparations for negotiations and could in time proceed to the negotiation stage. 12 This compromise was based on a bargain over optimal numbers in a first wave of enlargement, on the modalities of such which emphasised readiness to accept and enforce in full the acquis, and a geo-political move to extend beyond the selected NATO candidates (Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic) to include one Baltic state and Slovenia, thereby also winning the support of proximate EU neighbours.
Once again, the prospect of more internalisation (with consequences for member states’ investments in the EU) meant that little progress was made on issues of internal policy reform at the Luxembourg Council. This went against the thrust of the Commission’s Agenda 2000 strategy, where the selection of candidates for membership was tied to agreement on overall guidelines for the future of the CAP and EU finances. In the run up to the Luxembourg Summit, the member states could not agree to these guidelines. Those member states which had a high stake in maintaining existing arrangements for the CAP (Austria, Belgium, France and Germany) opposed the CAP guidelines, while the net recipients of EU cohesion funds resisted proposals which would reduce those benefits (Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland). In addition, three states which clearly expressed interests in a successful EU enlargement, Germany, Sweden and Austria voiced their opposition to any increase in their budgetary contributions. As a result, the Luxembourg Council only accepted the Agenda 2000 proposals as ‘an appropriate basis’ for further negotiations. While a minimum of consensus was achieved, future negotiations would not be restricted to the Commission’s proposals - clearly the member states awaited detailed policy proposals before committing themselves to reforms. 13 Just as in earlier negotiations on the Europe Agreements, progress towards enlargement could be frustrated in detailed sectoral negotiations and by cross-cutting cleavages in the Council. Nonetheless, the segmented nature of decision-making also allowed the EU proceed with enlargement on a more or less separate track to internal discussions on the CAP and EU finances.
In view of the broader EU agenda, the Luxembourg Conclusions had a number of advantages as a balancing act between protecting the EU’s own governance system and contributing to CEEC stability or enlargement to the East. By insisting that EU applicants had to introduce the entire acquis upon accession, the European Council postponed and possibly prevented the untying of old package deals on, for instance, the CAP. It also allowed the EU to continue to govern through the prospect of membership or below the membership line by using ‘soft’ governance. To use Smith’s theoretical concept, the EU created a negotiated order where the applicant countries were governed by a constant process of negotiations. However, the deepening of ties with the so-called “pre-insiders” (through negotiations on accession and accession partnerships) accentuated the process of internalisation and further blurred the boundaries between outsiders and insiders.
Despite this balancing act, it should be clear that Agenda 2000 and the Luxembourg Conclusions still only offered a short- to medium-term solution to enlargement. Actual membership will bring the question of altering the governance system to the fore again: the EU will face the same challenge of finding a balance between its capacity to govern, the boundaries of its governance system and the wider European political and security order. That the EU was not able to find a long term solution is hardly surprising. As argued in our framework for analysis, this segmented negotiation system is almost bound to produce sub-optimal decisions. In addition, both the uncertain external environment and the internal demands made upon the governance system (preparations for EMU, tackling unemployment etc.) affect efforts to strike a balance between the EU’s internal and external objectives.
In this respect, one will have to conclude that the jury is still out with regard to the EU’s ability to manage governance and its boundaries in the post-cold-war-Europe. Quite ironically, the first enlargement round and the prospect of several others could indeed provide the EU with the all-important shock to strategic decision-making. One possibility is that it may adjust to enlargement by developing the concept of a more flexible Union (hence ‘softening’ the institutional boundary). In a flexible Union - which permits different degrees of commitment - it would no longer be science-fiction to imagine different kinds of membership and participation in, for instance, only pillar two and three. What is more, potentially unstable countries, which will become the EU’s new neighbours, (Ukraine, Belarussia and Moldova) could possibly be offered new flexible arrangements which represent more than association but less than membership. Such an ‘unbundling of the territory of the EU’ where there would no longer be a close ‘fit’ between territory and authority would obviously produce a very different EU. In reality, it would however remove one of the ironies of European integration: the EU was established as a response to regional interdependence which undermined the link between the nation-state’s territory and authority while, at the EU-level the member states have tried to restore that very linkage between authority and territory as a defining feature of the EU-system (you are inside or outside the institutional/legal boundary).
V. Conclusions
This article aimed to develop a conceptual framework to analyse the EU’s relations with the CEEC. At present, the academic literature on external relations and enlargement lacks a framework which captures the linkages between developments here and the systemic and political development of the Union. The main argument of this article is that the governance school of integration can provide us with a framework for analysis.
First, it establishes the capacities of the Union to act and exercise influence with respect to its membership and the outside - two kinds of governance are produced, that of soft governance and that of negotiations. Second, it reminds us of the ‘unbundling of territory’ inherent in EU governance and directs our attention to the significance of boundaries to the capacity of the Union to extend governance beyond its membership. In practice, the maintenance, strengthening, blurring or movement of boundaries - geographical, cultural, transactional and institutional/legal - produces important effects for the outside. The EU exports models of governance, applies conditionality in its policies to effect ‘soft governance’ and uses the instrument of access to the system as a whole as a means of managing its relations with the outside. In addition, the actions of applicants provide opportunities and pressures for the extension of governance. However, this activity has significant consequences for EU governance as is evidenced by the process of internalisation. This implies that external developments and external actors become part of the EU bargaining process even prior to the act of formal enlargement to accept new member states. Action at the level of the boundaries has consequences for the political and economic investment of the member states in the EU system e.g. increased market access can introduce more competition, create pressures for internal policy reform while enlargement generates negotiations on candidates and modalities and eventually the nature of member state’ participation in the Union. This generates tension between actors’ overall security, systemic and sectoral interests.
Internalisation can lead to issue-linkage, affect the bargaining process and the internal development of the Union (policy, institutional, financial). Here again, the governance school allows us examine how internalisation plays out in decision-making. It is in EU negotiations (characterised as being protracted, inherently conservative, with a tendency to postpone decision-taking) that the resultant tensions and differential impacts of proposed action towards the outside surface. While the segmented nature of negotiations gives the appearance of insulation between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, in practice, internalisation demonstrates how policy choices towards the outside are shaped by concerns about their consequences for the inside or vice versa where internal developments shape policy towards the outside e.g. these were contributing factors in the refusal to contemplate enlargement to the East in the negotiation of the Europe Agreements; and the strengthening of the normative dimension of the EU in the Amsterdam Treaty and incorporation of Schengen into the acquis.
In the empirical section, the analytical framework of governance allowed us examine the interaction between governance and boundaries in the EU’s relations with the CEEC. This identified four features of the politics of enlargement which have largely been neglected in the literature:
1. The focus on boundaries revealed the links between the present governance system and the EU’s ability to contribute to stability in CEEC: by blurring and moving its boundaries, the EU can contribute to stability, but this also has major effects on the ‘carrying capacity’ of the EU’s internal governance system and has the potential to create new political divisions in Europe.
The study of relations with the CEEC uncovered a dynamic of interaction between the EU’s various boundaries. In 1993, the blurring of the transactional, cultural and geo-political boundaries led to pressure to act on its institutional/legal boundary. One of the main reasons why the EU decided to open negotiations with all applicants in Luxembourg, December 1997 was that it acknowledged that a shift of the institutional/legal boundary to only include a few CEEC applicants could be perceived as if the EU was drawing new geopolitical and cultural boundaries. This dynamic also draws attention to the significance of non-rational action in that the unintended effects of boundary changes pushed the EU into ever deeper co-operation with the CEEC.
2. The governance lens identified additional EU capacities which are not revealed in traditional studies of the EU’s formal relations with Central and Eastern Europe. The EU, by its very existence (as a system of governance) had a major attraction for the CEEC. The latter adapted to the Union, accepted its ‘soft governance’ and adjusted their domestic and foreign policies with a view to EU membership. From 1993/94, the EU also governed through the prospect of membership and in effect created a negotiated order with the CEEC without actually including them in its membership (thus, the link between formal membership and governance was broken).
3. The governance approach showed how the EU, even before it encompassed new members was significantly affected by the prospect of enlargement. Internalisation led to de facto anticipation and preparations for such even if the burden of adjustment lay with the CEEC up to 1997. Not only were the CEEC beginning to play by EU rules but the prospect of enlargement already raised questions about reform of policies, finances and institutions. Enlargement was an important consideration in negotiations leading to the Amsterdam Treaty and Agenda 2000. The latter attempts a strategic approach to enlargement and the future policy agenda of the Union by taking account of the interaction between both.
4. The focus on negotiations took us to the heart of the politics of enlargement. It highlighted divergent interests within and between the member states and the Commission on strategy towards the CEEC and implications for each with respect to their investments in the EU. Policy outcomes were not solely attributable to the reconciliation of member states’ interests vis-à-vis the CEEC, as narrow studies on enlargement would suggest, but also to the reconciliation of their interests in the effects of such outcomes on internal EU policies and activities. This revealed tension between security, political and economic interests. The politics of enlargement yielded complex negotiations and cross -cutting coalitions on systemic issues (all states guarded against major institutional reform); EU finances (net contributors such as Germany and the Cohesion states resisted substantial transfers to the CEEC throughout the period under review) and trade liberalisation. Cleavages emerged between central and peripheral states on the selection of candidates for a first enlargement and on the balance in EU relations with its neighbours to the East and the South. Moreover, additional external pressures and security concerns meant that enlargement to the CEEC became entwined with ostensibly separate policies towards Cyprus and Turkey. What emerged from this interplay was agreement on a process of enlargement where a distinction was made inter alia between applicants and stages of pre-accession and actual accession (the former concerns preparations while the latter concerns negotiations on entry terms).
Precisely because of the vested interests involved, EU enlargement is not around the corner. The final outcome will require a new balancing act with respect to maintaining positive investment accounts for existing states which reflect their interests and concerns with respect to the EU writ large and the wider Europe. The result will undoubtedly be a different EU - this confirms the key argument of this article that there are strong ties between the internal development of the Union and its external role in Europe.
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Notes
*: This article has benefited greatly from discussions at the ECSA-conference in Seattle (June 1997), comments from Brigid Laffan and anonymous referees. Needless to say the usual disclaimers apply. The authors would like to thank the Human Capital and Mobility Network for financial support in writing this article. Back.
Note 1: We use the term EC/EU to refer to the period 1989/97 and specifically use the term EC to refer to the period prior to the introduction of the Maastricht Treaty. Back.
Note 2: Activity in the external arena focuses on issues of access, institutionalised contacts and the ‘soft governance’ of diplomacy, persuasion and dialogue. As argued by Smith, this formal activity can be so wide-ranging as to transform itself into a negotiated order whereby, after a certain period, the EU and the outsider are engaged in a continuous series of negotiations leading to the point where the overall process is actually as important as the outcome (Smith, 1996b, p. 259). Back.
Note 3: Precisely with this in mind, Mitterrand, in 1991, proposed a Confederation of Europe as a means of safeguarding the EU system. Back.
Note 4: In the trade-off between generous, wide-ranging trade liberalisation and the need to re-open old package deals on for example the CAP, the member states opted for limited access for agricultural goods (Murphy 1996, pp. 114-119; Rollo and Smith 1993). The Commission too encountered sectoral divisions on issues including the relaxation of rules of origin. See Torreblanca (1998) for a detailed study of divisions amongst actors on steel. Back.
Note 5: The White Paper and the pre-accession strategy (which aimed to get the applicants to take on the acquis before accession) should also be seen as a protective strategy: the more of the acquis the applicants introduced before membership, the easier it would be to incorporate them as new members. Back.
Note 6: It should be said that Kohl only launched the idea orally - he refrained from launching an official proposal. This underlined the point that member states are not unitary actors: Kohl’s move was contested within Germany, especially from within the Foreign Office. In practice, it did however reflect a continuous strand in CDU thinking as already, in September 1994, the influential but unofficial Schäuble-Lamers paper suggested that a small enlargement to these states (and Slovenia) should be launched (cf. Tewes, 1998, 127). Back.
Note 7: Judging from Defence Minister Rühe’s speeches in 1993/94, NATO’s enlargement process could also have influenced Kohl’s attitude. According to Rühe, one should take care not to open a ‘backdoor to NATO’ by accepting applicants in the EU which were not granted membership of NATO (Bulletin, 16 May 1995). Back.
Note 8: Not all institutional and political reforms were however tied to Eastern enlargement. The need for institutional reform had already been prompted by EFTA enlargement while further reforms of the CAP were driven by internal concerns and forthcoming negotiations in the World Treaty Organisation (WTO). Back.
Note 9: Marelino Oreja, Commissioner responsible for preparing for the IGC, explained the postponement of institutional reform in a similar way: ‘....it shows the difficulties of getting political negotiations to focus on abstract issues which will be important in 5-10 years’ time, when major developments could intervene in the meantime’ (Oreja, 1997, p. 32). Back.
Note 10: Of course, the member states also had other arguments for incorporating Schengen in the ‘EU-house’, for instance to avoid discrepancies and conflict between the Schengen agreements and the acquis in Justice and Home Affairs. Back.
Note 11: It should be said that the support given by the Southern members to the regatta-option was probably linked to an interest in delaying actual enlargement in order to protect their specific interests in the EU e.g. continued access to EU cohesion funds etc. (cf. Lippert, 1998: 15). Back.
Note 12: Turkey was placed on a separate track in the enlargement process. Although the Luxembourg Summit confirmed Turkey’s eligibility for accession to the EU, it was not offered a place in the accession process (accession partnerships etc.) but was invited to participate in the European Conference involving all applicants. From the Turkish side, this special treatment was widely perceived as an attempt by the EU to draw a new religious/cultural boundary in Europe. Back.
Note 13: It should be noted that at this time, there was considerable resistance in the EU to embarking on a further round of CAP reforms in advance of negotiations on agricultural trade liberalisation in the WTO. Back.
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