Probably no posts from me or Claudia for the next few days, as we’ll all be in Germany. If you feel the need to read blog posts by me, here are my last few posts on A Fistful of…

with the EU as 15, appart from the UK, there was never any serious threats of actually leaving the EU.

however with the EU we have at the moment i can easily dream up situations where loads a countries might want to leave becuase the situation the find them selves in and the europe that they are surrounded by.

point i am getting at is some of europe wants to deepen, at the expense of a broadening of europe. however as mentioned above broadening is where its at at the moment. at somepoint there has to be a clash between those two desires, and in a broad EU i dont see much scope for it.

i dunno, but lately that has been playing on my mind, and i for one have no idea whats involved in actually leaving the EU.

“Der Spiegel” today on Monday in its paper version (page 22) published its latest polls concerning EU membership for Turkey and Croatia.

Turkey:–Yes—-No
Feb. 200454%—37%
Oct. 200452%—43%
Apr. 200543%—54%
Oct. 200550%—46%

Croatia:-Yes—-No
Oct. 200572%—21% (1000 people polled; TNS Infratest)

(Remaining percentages undecided. No further details given.)

DSW

If there was ever some faint chance of seeing justice done for the victims in Kurdistan, it just disappeared. It probably /was/ a faint chance, but who knows… we may have 15 years of negotiations with Turkey ahead, and many things were possible. But that one, now, isn’t.

So, as long as we’re admitting one country with unpunished war criminals, why not admit another? Croatia’s at least more manageable in size.

And, you know, put Turkey aside for a moment. (I know it’s hard, but try.) On its own merits, this is just a bad idea. It’s telling all potential candidates that, if you can find a strong enough patron, or make yourself part of a package deal, all sins can potentially be forgiven, all crimes swept under the rug.

Yes, I agree. Isn’t that what Britain was doing with its unconditional support for the opening of negotiations with Turkey?

We can’t have it both ways, Doug. We can’t admit Turkey despite its abundance of domestic war criminals thanks to foreign sponsorship and exclude Croatia for the same reasons. If we’re opting for the gamble that including these countries in the EU will apply significant pressure on them to make the necessary reforms, perhaps including the punishment of the worst figures in the ethnic wars of the 1990s, fine, that’s arguably defensible. We have to make that choice, though.

Just a pedantic point: nobody has agreed to let Turkey into the EU. They have agreed to negaotiate for a minimum of ten years about the possibility of Turkey joining, provided x, y, z.

Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia etc are effectively in the same position: they haven’t been given a carte blanche on human rights, in fact they all have to make changes.

All of this is carrot and stick stuff. The only debate here seems to be about how much carrot and how much stick.

None of this is good news for the war criminals who would definitely prefer no EU and no negotiations: ask the Kurds.

Methinks you are getting a little to cynical in your old age Randy.

@ Doug

“Is there anyone who seriously thinks that Bosnia is ready to embark on the road to EU membership?”

I think the issue isn’t that all these (and Ukraine, and Moldavia) are good causes: they certainly are: the issue is the EU’s capacity to absorb, especially after the constitution defeat.

I am sure all these states would benefit from having negotiations: it is a way to anchor them. But if we change perspective for a moment, and look at the EU itself, with difficulties about agreeing a budget, no consitution, and a Stability and Growth Pact 2.0 which may well not be working, we can see that decisions on accession is maybe the only important thing you can get everyone together on (and even then after you swap Croatia with Turkey to keep Austria on board). The UK needed something from its presidency to show that the EU wasn’t falling apart, and the only reasonable choice was accession. Now it won’t seem to matter so much if this month’s summit ends in stalemate.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, simply a look at institutional dynamics.

The big issue was of course raised by Austria (in the context of Turkey, but it holds with all the others), namely the capacity of a divided EU to absorb (politically, not economically) all these new members. I think there is the serious danger of drifting into gridlock, and especially if more problems show up in the functioning of the euro.

@ Robert

“And on that last point, while conventional wisdom has it that it is the “wider Europe” party that is driving rapid expansion, what would be a better precedent for establishing the “deeper Europe” than actual intervention against the sovereignty of a member state?”

I’m sure you’re right Robert. I think much of the widening/deepening debate is popycock. There is an inbuilt momentum to deepening, and most of the new members once they are in will probably favour this even more than some of the core countries.

Armenia and Azerbaijan will still be at war in 2020. Unlike Iraqi Kurdistan (undoubtable independend at that stage)