Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014
European Union, expansion of the
Section C. International relations
From the six members who signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957, to Croatia becoming the 28th member state on 1 July 2013, the EU’s history has been one of continuous expansion, as new states see the merits of the European project and seek to gain benefits of membership. Equally, some think that whatever the merits of past expansions, it is no longer viable for the EU to expand further; it has simply reached the limits for a viable institution that is so closely integrated. However, the requirement that new member states join the euro has deterred many prospective entrants, given its recent instability; perversely, however, the global financial crisis appears to have encouraged other new entrants, especially Iceland, whose own currency problems were so bad that even the euro seemed preferable.
Pros
[1] The European Union has had great success in reuniting a continent shattered by the Second World War. Members get clear benefits from co-operation and avoiding confrontation. Trade and prosperity are promoted, and citizens have increased opportunities to travel and work abroad. Through demonstrating liberal democracy to Eastern Europe, it may also have helped to win the Cold War. All of these benefits should be extended to others.
[2] The idea of global free trade is a distant dream; in the meantime, the world increasingly divides into regional free trade blocs (NAFTA, Mercosur [Common Market of the South], ASEAN, etc.). So the only way to grow the economies of Europe is to expand their trading frontiers further and further, to find new markets for products, and achieve specialisation and economies of scale.
[3] The EU has now adapted its institutions sufficiently to be highly capable of adapting to large numbers of new entrants. For instance, the reforms in the Lisbon Treaty (2007) relating to the management of the European Commission and the budget process mean that new members can now be absorbed in a flexible manner. Thus, new members do not present serious institutional problems.
[4] One of the EU’s great achievements is acting as a redistributive scheme for the European continent; in particular, it has succeeded in transforming Portugal, Poland, Spain and Ireland from relatively poor countries into developed economies on a par with the rest of Europe. It is now a moral imperative that the economic benefits of membership be spread to states in Southeastern Europe in particular.
Cons
[1] The extent to which the EU was actually causally important in preventing conflict in post-war Europe is contestable; it is simply not in fact plausible that Europe would have gone to war again after the devastation of the Second World War. Moreover, whatever its successes in the past, the EU is no longer primarily about that task, but about a broader project of economic liberalism. If anything, that produces more conflict and political disenchantment; for instance, the EU’s enforcement of austerity on Greece (from 2010 to 2013) was heavily responsible for the rise of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn.
[2] The answer to the need for increased trade is not expansion of the geographical scope of the EU, but better deals to lower trading barriers with different global economies. For instance, the EU’s round of ’Open Skies’ agreements with Canada and the USA to expand access to each other’s airline industries is a perfect example of how a smaller EU, acting in concert, can still liberalise trading relations without admitting new members.
[3] The EU is simply not built to continue expanding indefinitely. First, every time new members join, the institutions have to be adapted; for instance, the number of Commissioners has risen from 15 to 28 in spite of the fact that there are no new competences assigned to them. Second, many EU policies depend on a system of enforcement that only works when there are a small number of states, such that trust is maintained easily; for instance, the common currency depends on the ability to limit government spending under the Stability and Growth Pact, but as the recent euro crisis has shown, the EU’s accountability mechanisms are simply not built strongly enough to prevent states breaching it.
[4] The EU was able to make a small number of states grow rapidly by doing that process incrementally; when they were a small percentage of the EU economy, it was easy to reallocate funding to them. But the 2004 expansion has meant that poorer states are now a much larger proportion of the EU’s population, and it is no longer reasonable to expect the core of the EU to pay for them. Moreover, such generosity is a sham; in fact, the single largest item in the EU’s budget is the Common Agricultural Policy which favours French farmers, not the genuinely poor. It is not growth-enhancing to force states to contribute to that scheme.
Possible motions
This House would expand the EU indefinitely.
This House would welcome the countries of the Balkans into the EU.
This House would remove all geographical requirements for EU membership, and admit countries based purely on political and economic criteria.
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