East, west meet in the expanded EU

East, west meet in the expanded EU

Veeramalla Anjaiah
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

The 15-member European Union (EU), Europe's most powerful and
prosperous grouping, is creating another milestone in its history
on Saturday when its 12-starred blue flag sweeps aside the last
vestiges of the Cold War and allows millions of Central and
Eastern Europeans to formally rejoin the European family.

The eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) states -- Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania -- Cyprus and Malta, which have the fastest growing
economies -- are joining the EU with the hope of a bright future.

The historic enlargement -- the fifth and biggest since 1973
-- from 15 to 25 member states represents the final lifting of
the iron curtain and remains one of the greatest achievements of
the grouping.

"Today, as the logic of the Iron Curtain finally disappears,
we must do everything so that no other curtain arises on the
eastern frontier of Poland and the EU. Let us remain open," wrote
Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza's editor-in-chief Adam Michnik in
the International Herald Tribune newspaper.

For most of the new member countries, who suffered from world
wars, communism, totalitarianism and genocide for almost eight
decades and separated from the Western Europe in the name of
ideology, the entry is like another liberation (after the fall of
communism in late 1980s) on one side and an opportunity to share
the EU's goals of freedom, democracy and prosperity on the other.

French President Jacques Chirac commended the enlargement on
Thursday as a giant step to make the EU a major economic power.

"By welcoming in the countries that have suffered most from
the divisions of the past, the Union is a giant step. Because,
with its 455 million inhabitants, the Union is asserting itself
as a first-class economic power," Chirac said in Paris.

The new member countries, with a composite population of about
75 million people, speaking nine different languages (existing
members have 11 languages) and GDP of US$320 billion, will reap
benefits of joining a common market of 455 million people on
Saturday.

Thanks to the EU's customs union, single market and single
currency, the people, goods and services and money move around
within the EU as freely as within one country. These freedoms are
extended to the 10 newcomers on par with the existing members.

Despite the prospect of more aid and trade, the new members
may not be getting the same benefits as Spain, Portugal, Ireland
and Greece received when they joined the EU, given -- perhaps --
the new members' size, per capita income and unemployment rate.

The average per capita income of new members is $11,500 in
compared to the EU-15's $25,200. The average unemployment rate of
these newcomers is at 14.9 percent, compared to old members'
unemployment rate of 8.2 percent

It is a fact that all these 10 countries are still poor, by EU
standards. The eight CEE countries have an average GDP per head
of about one quarter of today's EU average.

Though the road to the Enlargement Day or E-Day was difficult,
the new countries, which are poorer than the existing members,
finally made their dreams come true.

Because they had to change their thousands of rules and
regulations, cut the budget for the existing welfare programs and
subsidies with painful repercussions to meet the EU's rules and
standards in a short span of time.

The EU has allocated 21.84 billion euros to help the newcomers
prepare for accession, and 58.07 billion euros over five years to
help meet the cost of enlargement after candidate countries have
become member states.

The European Commission (EC), the executive arm of the EU,
estimates that the present enlargement will add upto 1 percent
extra growth each year for the newcomers during the first 10
years of their membership.

Besides strict criteria for admitting new members, the EU
imposes obligations and duties as well as rights on its members.
The members have an obligation to implement the EU rules which
they adopted. The EC will monitor the implementation of the EU
rules.

After the enlargement, perhaps, these former Soviet satellite
states will be having, the Brussels-based fastidious bureaucrats
or "Eurocrats" as their new bosses in place of their Moscow-based
former bosses, Communists.

The regional groupings like the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) can learn from the EU experience and explore the
idea of establishing a similar grouping in Asia. The enlarged EU
can offer more opportunities for Indonesia, which has close ties
with some of the new members for more than four decades, in terms
of trade and investment.

The 25 members of the EU are all rather different, in their
different ways including population, size, richness, language and
culture.

These differences would pose a major challenge for the
functioning of the EU and in the formulation of its policies.

Given the differences among the old and new members on various
international issues, including Iraq issue, it would be very
difficult to formulate a common foreign policy of the EU.

Yet, the EU -- which was originally started as a coal and
steel community in 1951 -- had succeeded in unifying the divided
Eastern and the Western parts of Europe and must look to the
future to absorb the remaining European countries to create a
united Europe that is strong and prosperous.