By Taimour Lay
For all the pledges and half promises made to EU hopefuls, the obstacles to membership are mounting. Bulgaria’s timely accession could be the latest casualty of hardening attitudes in Brussels
There was no time for a holiday this year: Bulgaria’s politicians were forced to spend the long hot summer toiling in Sofia. A new governing coalition was painstakingly assembled following June elections, and then immediately began to pass the latest tranche of reforms required to keep EU accession on track. Yet despite all the hard work designed to impress European observers, the reward this autumn could be a one-year delay in EU entry until 2008.
It is Romania’s role as entry “partner” that could jeopardize Bulgarian hopes. Both countries were deemed unready to join in 2004’s east European enlargement and signed accession treaties that postponed entry until 2007 or 2008. Their accessions are technically separable, but Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform stresses that there is a big gap between the legally and the politically feasible: “Practically speaking, it’s unlikely that the EU will want to go through the whole palaver twice by admitting one now and one a year later.”
In light of Romania’s struggle to meet the necessary criteria in time (EU officials have been warning of a “fiasco” if it is admitted in 2007), it appears Bulgaria’s destiny could be decided by events in Bucharest. A “no” to Romania could be seized by the Commission to postpone both entries.
The apparent unwillingness to uncouple their candidacies reflects a marked diminution in political goodwill towards aspirant members. The experience of the last enlargement, combined with hardening attitudes in France and Germany, and institutional wrangling in Brussels, are all combining to make postponement more likely than not.
If so, Barysch is not overly perturbed: “A one-year delay would not be of huge importance, as long as investors knew it was only a year. The impact in itself would just be that Bulgaria would be deprived of EU funds for one more year.” Nevertheless, a postponement would be revealing. Joining the club was never easy, but it is set to get a lot harder. If Bulgaria can get the economics right and still face delay, then other candidate countries, besides Romania, will be observing the scene anxiously.
Upbeat
New socialist prime minister Sergey Stanishev has remained upbeat about Bulgaria’s prospects, though he knows that the final decision on entry depends upon forces outside his control. Indeed, such was his desire to placate the financial markets that he appointed a finance minister from the centre-right, Plamen Oresharsky. After “frank” talks with EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in August, Stanishev pledged to pass the necessary reform legislation: “Preparation for EU membership in 2007 is our number one priority. We are fully aware that Bulgaria has to focus on a number of areas where we are lagging behind. Our ambition is to deliver results.”
But “results” might not be enough, according to Ognian Shentov, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy in Sofia. “When the Commission reports [in November and next spring], the language will of course be technical, but the decision will be political. If we don’t get it, it won’t be because we’re not ready, but because Germany and France are addressing their own domestic audience. And this is very much related to the EU’s current institutional crisis and the impasse over the constitution and the budget.”
But will Bulgaria be ready? The tough language employed by Barroso and Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, might indicate genuine concern; but it’s also a canny attempt to ramp up the pressure and ensure changes are followed through. The experience of the previous wave of enlargement was that, once countries were assured of their place in the club, reforms quickly stalled. Bulgaria particularly needs to make progress on modernizing the judiciary and tackling corruption. The fear of delayed membership is successfully focusing minds to that end.
Gergana Noutcheva, Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, is confident the government will prove stable and capable of implementing change. “The EU integration agenda is so dominant that it sets the parameters and priorities of all parties. There will be no opposition to reforms in principle but some disagreements on detail. For instance, judicial reform will be very contentious, and there are different ways of responding to EU conditionality requirements on that issue.”
Political ends
But she also fears that the Commission will come to a decidedly “political” judgment: “Speaking to officials in Brussels, it seems that, while the discourse is that accession will be merit based and each country will be judged separately, it nevertheless seems quite unlikely that one of them will go first and the other a year later.”
Economic challenges do remain, however, though none should prove insurmountable. They include the completion of a modern land registry and agricultural payments system in order to disburse EU aid, company law amendments, and the provision of free access to services. It is a measure of the previous government’s success that Bulgaria enters the final strait in such good health. Foreign investment in 2004 hit a record E2 billion, and unemployment fell from 19% to 11%. “No candidate is ever completely ‘ready’”, said one EU watcher. “It’s a question of adaptability and future progress within the Union. On these counts, Bulgaria will be ready.”
Should the Commission decide that Bulgaria has not fully met EU criteria, it will exercise the “safeguard” clause included in the accession treaty, thereby delaying entry by one year. But any such assessment of the country’s political, social and economic preparedness would itself conceal numerous dynamics at work. The Commission is not in reality a wholly autonomous and impartial arbiter of the rules, but a political body that, directly and indirectly, reflects the interests of leading EU states. If France and Germany wish to delay Bulgarian entry for reasons other than the strictly technocratic, then they are likely to do so.
Growing reservations
However, one year’s delay might further expose the EU’s increasing doubts about future enlargement. An alternative block to accession, even for these two candidates who have already signed their treaties, would be ratification failure by one of the EU’s 25 member state parliaments. Before the French and Dutch “no’s” to the constitutional treaty, such an eventuality would have seemed unlikely. But it’s now perfectly possible to envisage a member state exercising its veto in the face of a voter backlash.
For all the pledges and half promises made to aspiring “third wave” countries, the obstacles to new membership are mounting. Bulgaria’s candidacy, delayed or otherwise, is being dragged forward on the (now ebbing) tide of enthusiasm that carried the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and the Baltic States into the Union in 2004. Even if it doesn’t do so this time, the public and political mood could certainly prejudice future enlargement into the Balkans and, when the time comes, Turkey.
For future candidates, the prospects for membership will depend upon more than just economic development and the technical demands of the acquis communautaire. The obstacles will be undeniably political and electoral too. Regardless of any delay, both Bulgaria and Romania will be counting themselves very fortunate in comparison.