Summary: Europe and Security In Transition
Security dimensions of EU enlargement
Erhard Busek
The author is convinced that EU enlargement is an absolute necessity and that it will go hand in hand with a firstrate securitypolitical challenge. Europe can only gain by the enlargement, for if it fails, instability and the inability to act, as the old continent knew it, may well resurface.
The new round of enlargement will, contrary to the last one, have to address the question of the final objective, the finalité politique of Europe, as well as deal with the changed concept of security. The example of South-Eastern Europe has made it very clear that the confrontation lines no longer run along national borders, but that almost centuryold conflicts that had been kept in check by special political constellations are being revived.
The chances that had opened up by the change in 1989 were only partially used. The western democracies had no answers to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism, and the proclamations of Marshall Plans of all kinds were not followed by actions. Nevertheless, it is undisputed that during the decade following the velvet revolution more people than ever got a chance for democracy and human rights.
As far as security questions are concerned, the UN, the OSCE, NATO, the WEU, the Council of Europe, and some other organizations are competing with each other. Yet, the bottom line still is, that Europe is unable to act without the USA. Although the EU aspirants are very much interested in military security, one cannot expect the decision making processes to become any easier in an enlarged EU. The inner conditions of the EU need to be consistently tightened, in order to improve the ability to act and to enhance its credibility for the outside world. Only then will the Union be able to avoid the widespread criticism of being "a global payer”, yet no "global player”. Whether the enlargement will proceed in 2004 as planned or whether it will have to be postponed, due to EU internal debates over its condition, is immaterial, as the negotiations with the new aspirants have already progressed beyond the "point of no return”.
As Romania and Bulgaria will most likely not be part of the next round of EU enlargement, they should be considered for the next round of NATO enlargement, in order to avoid alienation.
To see EU enlargement exclusively from the perspective of its economic practicability is undue. Instead one will have to take the following political and securitypolitical parameters into consideration: In Hungary crossborder cooperation, also in the military field, should help facilitate to overcome minority problems resulting from the Trianon Treaty, which have flared up again recently. Slovakia should be seen under the aspect of its strategic importance, while Poland should be viewed with regard to its cooperation with its eastern neighbors. An accession of the Czech Republic still suffers from the lack of coming to grips with the past as well as from nuclear security issues, while Slovenia’s ambitions are exclusively seen in a positive light.
The Baltic States would be served well, also in the field of securitypolicy, if they joined the EU, and the neighboring regions could only profit from it, while the ambitions of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad were received with mixed feelings in Brussels, when it approached the EU. By comparison, Cyprus and Malta do not pose such problems, though in Malta the population is split down the middle over the question of whether to join the EU or not, so that accession requests and withdrawals from them alternate. Cyprus, however, is still an acute security problem, despite the recent improvement in the relations between the two ethnic groups.
The security aspects must not be seen onedimensionally, as for instance under the impression of the terrorist attacks of 11 September, but have to consider political, military, police, economic, and social parameters, so that the reception of new countries into the EU will foster combined efforts in the most diverse areas of life, which were, and still are, the basis of European integration: stability and welfare as well as the development of democracy and human rights.
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