Analysis: Does 'New Europe' exist?

By Kirsty Hughes
Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels

As one country after another votes in favour of European Union membership, it seems increasingly likely that 10 new members will join the union next May. How will the EU of 25 differ from the EU of 15?

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has envisaged it splitting into two - New Europe and Old Europe.

Czechs are the latest nation to vote for EU membership

The vision is rejected by many "Old Europeans" including German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who said last week that there was no new Europe or old Europe, just "our Europe".

But the UK Government is hoping that the new member states, especially the eight from central and eastern Europe, will share its views not only on transatlantic relations but also on the economy and on European integration itself, insisting on an intergovernmental union of states and not a federal Europe.

If this is the UK's hope, however, it is destined to be disappointed.

Diverse views

The political circumstances that led to all the candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe (but notably not Cyprus and Malta) signing up to public declarations of support for the US policy on Iraq in January will not be repeated.

We will never have to choose - Europe is our only option David Kral Czech Europeum think-tank

They were a one-off, not least because at the time the countries were not yet in the EU and many were still awaiting ratification of their attempts to join Nato.

These countries are in fact diverse in their views on foreign policy, the economy and EU integration, just as the current member states are. Nor do they have the same choices on foreign policy as larger countries like the UK do.

As David Kral, director of Czech think-tank Europeum, puts it: "The importance of transatlantic links is often considerably overestimated as we will never play a key role in US strategic thinking.

"We will never be able to build a privileged relationship with anyone else [like Britain-US], we will never have to choose - Europe is our only option".

He believes this is true for other Central European countries too: "I am sure this largely applies to other countries like Hungary, Slovakia or Slovenia. Poland has a different position or at least is trying to play it differently".

No large bloc

In contrast to the UK, the new member states will join the two key EU policy areas of the Euro and the border-free Schengen zone as soon as Brussels says they are ready.

The challenge for the new enlarged EU will not be to cope with splits between new and old Europe but to cope with the broad diversity of views across the 25

And these countries are all joining the EU for clear political reasons, not only for the benefits of the internal market, and structural and agricultural funds. So they will be in Europe's core but within that they will take diverse policy positions.

So, for example, on the question of whether to allow any majority voting on tax issues, the UK has built up a small alliance to oppose this with Ireland, Sweden, Estonia and Poland - a large new Europe "bloc" this is not.

More generally, Estonia certainly shares with the UK a free market orientation in economic policy together with a strong suspicion of further EU integration.

But Poland shares only some interests with the UK - on structural funds it may align itself with Spain (and, as it has done already, on retaining a large voting weight in EU decisions) and with France on agriculture.

And views on integration vary too.

Poland could ally itself with different countries on different issues

All the new member states that will join next year, except for Poland, fought strongly against proposals led by the UK, France and Spain to create a new president of the European Council - intended to emphasise the EU as an intergovernmental body.

The candidates saw this as favouring the larger member states. They lost on this but fought, successfully, to keep their equal position on the European Commission - the key integrationist body.

The Czech Government representative on the convention, Jan Kohout, has expressed clear support for moving in a more federal direction. Estonia is much more wary of "Brussels centralism", with Poland somewhere in the middle of this federal-intergovernmental spectrum.

Strategic leadership

So the challenge for the new enlarged EU will not be to cope with splits between new and old Europe but to cope with the broad diversity of views across the 25.

Once in, the new member states' policy positions will develop and change, says Mr Kral - but he does not expect strong euroscepticism.

"In my view there will never be such a strong suspicion towards Europe as in Britain," he said.

So "new Europe" does not exist.

The real risk for the enlarged EU is not a chasm between old and new but that amid a changing set of shifting alliances across different policy issues it will fail to find strategic direction. Strategic leadership is the big new issue for the enlarged EU.

Kirsty Hughes is a senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, and associate fellow at the London School of Economics.