Where Has He Been?

File this one under People Who Ought to Know Better. Odder than the fact of the argument is the frequency with which I see it.

DON’T STRETCH EUROPE’S PROMISED LAND
(original is trapped in pay-per-view)
Financial Times, 7 Nov 03, by Dietrich Von Kyaw *

* The writer was Germany’s permanent representative to the
EU from 1993-1999

Since the second world war, the European Union has
decisively shaped the destiny of Europe. Its success is,
not least, due to its “community method” of integration and
its ability to bring about the cohesion and efficiency
needed to raise the continent above the counterproductive
practices of the past.

Today, after the break-up of the Soviet empire, the EU is
overrun by candidates who wish to join this exclusive club
as soon as possible.

+++

Most of the rest of the column makes a rough bit of sense, but the idea that the EU is being overrun by candidates in a great rush is pure silliness. Fourteen years ago yesterday, the Berlin Wall was opened. Twelve years ago this coming Christmas, the hammer and sickle came down from the Kremlin and haven’t been seen since.

In all that time, the main foreign policy goals of the states of Central Europe have not changed: membership in NATO and the European Union. Since an American-led intervention brought something like peace to the Balkans in 1995, eventual membership in the EU has been those states’ goal as well. No one can claim to have been surprised by the Central Europeans’ desires.

Nor can the word “overrun” be anything but rhetorical cover. It’s been fourteen years. The life of three British Parliaments. Two full French presidential terms. Two complete rotations of the Union’s presidency through all of its members. Four elections for German chancellor. Time enough for Berlusconi to come and go and come back again as Italian prime minister.

Looked at from another perspective, more time will have elapsed between the fall of the Berlin Wall and EU enlargement than between the surrender of Nazi Germany and acceptance of the Federal Republic into NATO.

There has been nothing speedy about the process of enlargement. Nothing hasty. And “as soon as possible” only in a very peculiar Brussels definition of the phrase, as anyone writing for the Financial Times certainly ought to know.