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Deepening vs. Widening
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20053 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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12 / 1992 |
1,527 Words |
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Robert Silver
Robert Silver is editor of Issues in Focus, a current affairs
magazine based in the United Kingdom. |
Soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989-1990, many argued that the three most westerly ex-communist states--Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland--would soon be accepted into the European Community, thereby cementing their rejection of communism. Had the EC's setup as a free-trade area--with substantial, finite rules on trade, agriculture, transport, and environmental issues, plus 1992's single market--stayed in basic terms as in 1990, their early entry would have been in the cards. But the EC, after Maastricht, has taken a new turn. It is centered on monetary convergence, plus a "social chapter" with new rules for the labor market, also taking on defense and foreign policy matters (in the defense case, via the Western European Union [WEU]).
It is axiomatic in the higher ranks of the community that there is a trade-off between intensifying of "deepening" the EC through the Maastricht process and "widening" the membership. The more members it has (there are now 12), the harder it is to flesh out a federation; its dynamics become centrifugal, not centripetal. The United Kingdom backed widening as a negotiating device to limit "deepening." The EC Commission proposed last March that, if more than a few new states join, new institutions could be set up, and all the members need no longer rotate in turn in the presidency on six-month stints (with an equal say for Luxembourg or Germany). Its power would be shared with the commission, but they could jointly agree on a single executive for a given, longer term--and subject to a stronger Parliament.
The EC, by Maastricht, pledged itself in principle to creating a single state, though how far the detailed process set up by it meant in time a federated superstate, how far a radically new kind of interstate mechanism unique to human history, is a matter of opinion. International lawyers have yet to say. The "No" in the Danish referendum and, strikingly, the very tight "Yes" in the French one, plus problems foreseen in the British Parliament and the German regions when their governments offer the treaty for ratification, all shed doubt on Maastricht's survival in its first form. Add in September's currency crisis, with Anglo-German conflicts; the resulting talk of "a two-speed Europe" (with an inner, faster lane centered on Germany, France, and Benelux); and renewed promises to give extra force to the delegation of powers by the EC to member states--and it becomes clear that the politics of federation are highly fluid.
Eastern Europe
The ex-communist states, if they do apply to
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