By Anne-France White - 16th October 2006
The May 2004 EU enlargement has been a “great success” in spite of pre-accession concerns, according to a new report.
The report, called ‘Big bang, smaller shock’ and published by Brussels consultancy Burson-Marsteller, assesses the impact of the 2004 enlargement on EU policies and processes based on interviews with 50 senior EU officials, diplomats and politicians.
The report comes in the run-up to Romania and Bulgaria’s EU entry, with increasing signals from Brussels that the EU will need substantial institutional reform if it is to expand beyond 27 members.
Looking at the 2004 wave, the report concludes that in spite of “occasional turbulence” in relationships between the old EU15 and the ten new member states, “the overall effect has been one of controlled absorption and mutual adjustment”.
This, the paper continues, comes in spite of the “ominous predictions” made in the run-up to May 2004, when analysts widely predicted difficulties over single market rules, a food safety crisis and institutional gridlock on decision-making.
Contrary to expectations, the report says the ten new member states have shown high levels of compliance with EU laws, even outdoing the old member states on transposing EU market rules and complying with environmental law.
The new members’ transposition deficit is 1.5 per cent, compared to 2.2 per cent for the old member states.
The paper concedes that the EU10’s accession “has probably contributed to a diminishing priority given by the EU to environment policy”, as the newcomers all “faced challenging assignments in meeting existing EU rules” in the field.
But it emphasises that this shift was not triggered by the new member states themselves, as the Barroso commission had already shown a tendency to “temper environmental policy with pragmatism”.
The 2005 revamp of the Lisbon strategy, for example, placed less emphasis on the environment in favour of boosting jobs and growth.
Meanwhile, the two areas singled out as having been marked most positively by the 2004 enlargement are competitiveness and external relations.
The report argues that the EU10, whose growth rates “systematically outstrip the EU15”, are using their collective weight to “support the effective pursuit of the Lisbon agenda”.
But it is in the field of external relations that the report says enlargement has been most influential, as the new member states “brought expertise that the EU simply did not possess – particularly in relations with eastern Europe, and above all, with Russia”.
This is likely to prove all the more important at a time when the EU is looking to increase its energy dealings with Moscow.
Conversely, the paper notes that enlargement has increased the EU’s dependence on energy imports, as the new member states are both power-hungry, because of their rapidly growing economies, and generally less efficient in their use of energy.
The EU10 – and especially the Baltic countries – are particularly vulnerable towards Russia in energy terms, as demonstrated by the sudden price increase on gas imposed by Russian energy producer Gazprom in early 2006.
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