Reflections on the timing of EU enlargement

Rapid accession does not seem to be an attainable goal for all candidate countries in the short term. So the EU needs to take two steps to keep the enlargement process sustainable and transparent. First, Brussels has to offer a clear, gradual time schedule to the candidates that are not in the first wave of enlargement, at the latest, at the time when the date of the first enlargement is set. Secondly, the principle of partial membership has to be applied in practice as well. This approach has to be clearly differentiated from ‘second-class membership’, which would be unacceptable to the candidate countries for political, economic and psychological reasons. Partial membership means that some candidate countries would participate in some community actions and programmes as full members, while in other areas they still did not qualify for membership. Already today, there is a good example of this, in the participation of candidate countries in the EU’s fifth R & D framework programme. It is very likely that the new Schengen borders of the EU may be based on the same approach. The EU maturity of some candidate countries will develop at a slower (or much slower) pace than the requirements for a European security policy, which results fundamentally from growing social and public pressure within the current EU member-states. So overcoming this ‘time gap’ may call for some innovative concepts. Membership of the Schengen framework by the Baltic States, Bulgaria and Romania could save the EU (and most of the first-wave candidate countries) a lot of money. In geographical terms, it could extend the security borders of Europe, while stabilizing the part of Central and Eastern Europe that could otherwise be divided by an enlargement in different stages. The solution to this danger is not to delay the membership of all candidates, but to develop transitional plans based on clear timing. That is the only way to guarantee the stability of the region and strengthen the cooperation among the countries and peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.