The EU's experience of enlargement demonstrates how effective are both the accession process itself and a definite timetable for accession in re-shaping the applicant state's public administration, judiciary, and economy. In effect the enlargement process has helped consolidate fragile democratic institutions, open up previously moribund economies, strengthen administrative capacity, reduce corruption in public life, and helped stabilise relations between neighbouring countries. Just as Greece, Portugal and Spain consolidated their democracies through EU membership, Bulgaria and Romania must be offered the same opportunity. But the EU can only effectively 'europeanise' outside states by offering a concrete perspective on membership. Anything short of this is looked on suspiciously by applicant states and slows the process of reform.
Faced with these important decisions, EU leaders should also bear in mind that the early evidence from the eastern enlargement demonstrates conclusively that it has been a 'win-win' experience for both the new member states and the EU.
Trade has grown exponentially over the past decade and the old EU enjoys a significant trade surplus with Central and Eastern Europe. Crucially, investment by EU companies in the new member states has not been displaced from the old member states but rather has been directed at building new businesses in the new member states. Where, for example, Coca Cola has set up new bottling plants to service the Hungarian market, it has retained such plants in Austria and Germany. Financial institutions have bought banks and insurance companies exclusively to service emerging domestic markets in Eastern Europe rather than as instruments for cost-cutting or downsizing their core EU businesses.
One important reason for the current fear of enlargement is that EU leaders have to date not bothered to explain the process, and the benefits it offers Europe, to their citizens. Living in Paris throughout the recent referendum campaign, I was astonished to attend campaign rallies where eastern enlargement was routinely presented as negative for France and the EU. Most of the claims regarding the delocalisation of industry and the supposed influx of East European workers were entirely spurious. Yet because political representatives had failed to explain enlargement, these myths took on the appearance of truth and convinced a large number of people to vote against the Treaty.
The French case also demonstrates clearly that some EU leaders are using enlargement as an explanation for their own countries economics ills. Better to blame Pawel, the Polish plumber, for French unemployment than the misplaced economic policies which have for long impeded French competitiveness and delivered only sclerotic economic growth. This behaviour is simply shameful and must be brought to an end. French jobs are much more threatened by the protectionist inclinations of powerful domestic producer interests and their political acolytes than any competitive challenge posed by Bulgaria and Romania.
Looking further ahead, the EU must also consider how it manages its relations with the Western Balkans and Turkey. The gradual incorporation of these states into European structures is vital to the stabilisation of South Eastern Europe. In the current climate the temptation will be to turn away from expansion and create new structures outside of existing frameworks. This would be a fundamental mistake. The history of enlargement demonstrates clearly that only a concrete perspective on membership induces outside states to engage in the sort of reforms that over time embed European norms in their countries and ensures a benign inter-state environment. European leaders would do well to take another look at recent enlargement history and hold their nerve.
Dr John O'Brennan is IRCHSS Government of Ireland Fellow in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick. His book on the Eastern enlargement of the EU will be published by Routledge in December.