Summit set to define Europe’s new order

Date: 02/12/1999

EU leaders face a daunting challenge as they prepare for next weekend's summit in Helsinki, with key decisions to be taken on enlargement and giving the Union the military capacity to respond to crises on its doorstep. Simon Taylor reports

WHEN EU leaders meet for their biannual summit in Helsinki next weekend, they will face a daunting challenge as they strive to close a chapter on the tumultuous political events of the last ten years.

The decisions to be taken in Finland will determine whether the EU can make a success of bringing the former countries of the Soviet bloc into the fold. They will also be crucial to the Union's hopes of being able to deal with military crises on its doorstep when US political imperatives mean that Washington is not prepared to intervene.

The summit will be the first test of whether new European Commission President Romano Prodi can turn his vision of reuniting Europe during his five-year term of office into a reality. It will also mark new EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana's formal debut on the Union stage, and he will be plunged straight into a fierce debate over how the EU can take on more responsibility for maintaining peace and security in a region prone to conflict.

The challenge of eastward enlargement and the question of EU defence capabilities are in fact two sides of the same coin, reflecting the new political landscape in Europe after the end of the Cold War.

Since Communist regimes tumbled across central and eastern Europe a decade ago, countries in the region have been pushing to end their 50 years of exclusion from the European home.

While the transition from Moscow's dominance to democratic societies with market-orientated economies was relatively bloodless in most of the countries now hoping to become EU members, Yugoslavia's plunge into bitter racial conflict has forced the Union to confront the question of whether it can guarantee stability on its flanks in the new millennium.

Links between events in that strife-ridden corner of the Balkans and the enlargement process are impossible to overlook.

The decisions to be taken in Helsinki on how to treat the five central and east European countries which are not already negotiating terms of entry with the EU are pretty much a foregone conclusion following the crisis in Kosovo earlier this year. Despite concerns that Romania and Bulgaria are lagging too far behind in terms of economic and political development to warrant starting entry talks, the crucial support role they played in NATO's campaign against Serbian forces means that they will take their seats at the negotiating table next year.

Although the Commission set out a number of conditions which had to be met before the two countries could start talks, Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen said last week that Bucharest and Sofia were well on the way to meeting the criteria.

But while the decision to invite a further six countries - including Malta - to begin negotiations may be a formality, Turkey's fate still hangs in the balance.

Ankara's chances of being treated as a full candidate for EU membership have improved beyond all recognition over the last 12 months. Turkish Premier Bülent Ecevit's efforts to build bridges with the Union were already starting to pay dividends before the summer and the earthquake in August offered Greece an opportunity to show solidarity with its Aegean bête noire.

Yet in the run-up to the Helsinki summit, which begins next Friday (10 December), doubts remain over whether Athens will agree to give Ankara the 'candidate' status it seeks, despite a number of encouraging signs such as the recent talks between Turkish Cypriot leader Raul Denktash and Greek Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides to explore ways of ending the dispute over the island's divided status.

As the summit moves closer, EU governments are lobbying Greek Prime Minister Simitis hard, trying to convince him that the only way to get concessions out of Ankara on the tricky issues of democracy and human rights is to bind the country into a strategy designed to prepare it for EU membership. “Giving Turkey candidate status is a very small concession to make in return for some pretty major concessions from them,” said one EU diplomat.

Verheugen, the wily architect of the Union's new approach to Ankara, highlighted the need for major reform during visit to the country last week, insisting: “The precondition for Turkey's EU membership is that it becomes a different Turkey.”

Because of the political priority of enlargement, Union governments are clearly tailoring their approach towards next year's EU treaty reform talks to ensure that eastward expansion is not held up by internal wrangling.

Although there are signs that EU leaders may now be prepared to go beyond simply resoving the issues left over at the end of the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty negotiations to ensure that the Union can continue to function with up to 27 members, the menu will not be too rich to prevent the EU digesting it by 2002 - the earliest possible date for enlargement.

While bringing the ten central and eastern Europe countries plus Cyprus and Malta into the EU fold will continue to be a question of difficult but ultimately civil negotiations with democratic, open societies, dealing with the nightmarish flip side of the end of the Cold War poses more difficult questions.

As the demise of Communism removed the glue which held Yugoslavia together and bloody nationalist conflict erupted once again on Europe's south-eastern flank, the Union had to call on US-dominated NATO, the 50-year-old defence organisation designed to defend the West against Soviet attacks, to bomb the Serbs back to the negotiating table.

Barbed comments from Washington about Europe's inability to police its own backyard may have prompted mutters from EU leaders, but they knew that in the final analysis they were reliant on the overwhelming military might of the US armed forces. But Washington's delay in taking decisive action in Bosnia and its reluctance to see US soldiers killed in far-away conflicts have convinced Union leaders that the EU needs to be able to act on its own when the going gets too tough for the White House.

Union diplomats repeatedly stress their astonishment at how fast work on giving the EU the military capacity to act independently of the US has progressed. Following recent decisions to speed things up, such as the appointment of Solana to head the Western European Union, next weekend's summit will consider how and whether the EU can manage crises which requires military action.

Union leaders will focus on how to set up a reserve of armed forces which can be called upon to intervene in future crisis-management situations like Bosnia and Kosovo.

EU diplomats say heads of state and government should have no problem signing up to an agreement which could see up to 70,000 European troops ready to be deployed within 60 days which could then be kept in place for up to three years. But they will face bigger problems in deciding how the Union can take the rapid decisions needed to respond to a crisis with military repercussions. Finding common ground between the Union's 15 members states on foreign policy issues has always been difficult given countries diverging geopolitical interests. Trying to get the 15 to agree on decisive military action poses challenges on a much greater scale.

Diplomats say a French proposal to set up a new political and security decision-making body over and above the heads of the current group of EU ambassadors who wield most of the day-to-day power in the Union looks unlikely to fly. Union governments are reluctant to contemplate the type of treaty change required to give such a new body authority. “Why put yourself to that much trouble when you have not got either a military capability or a crisis to deal with?” said one diplomat.

But even if Helsinki decides to put off some of the more important decisions, enabling the French to make their summit next December the one which establishes the EU's independent security identity, some kind of interim arrangement will emerge to lay the groundwork for later structures.

There is a pleasing irony about the challenges facing Union leaders in Helsinki. The enlargement issue means that leaders of an organisation created to prevent further wars between France and Germany faces the task of ending the divisions caused by the post-war carve-up of the continent. At the same time, the EU has to prove it can grow from the supporting role in security it was limited to during the Cold War because of fears of German militarism.