Jonathan Todd

Philip Stephens has previously written in the FT that “Turkey has turned east as Europe clings to the past“. Today Gideon Rachman writes in the FT:

“It was Ukraine’s misfortune that the Orange Revolution took place just as the European Union was succumbing to “enlargement fatigue” – following the shock of moving from 12 members in 1995 to 27 members today. As a result, the EU has given Ukraine an almost criminal lack of encouragement, as the country attempts to secure simultaneously its independence, its democracy and its prosperity. Everybody knows that actually joining the Union is a long and arduous process – since it involves transforming the laws and economies of the applicant countries. But it would have cost the EU very little to give Ukraine the encouragement of holding out the prospect of eventual membership.”

While Turkey probably also remains “a long and arduous process” away from EU membership, Turkey has been knocking on the EU’s door for decades. This article in Newsweek suggests that they got tired of getting no answer and focused instead on becoming a dominant player in the Middle East.  

The transformation of central and eastern Europe that the EU encouraged by opening itself up to membership from post-Communist states is one of its great successes. So, it is all the more sad to witness the consequences of the present “enlargement fatigue”. We all know – most especially people in states like Turkey and Ukraine – that EU membership for many of the states that border the EU remains, for better or for worse, a long way away. Nonetheless, the EU should still be capable of acting as a stronger magnet to these states than it has been in recent years. The carrot doesn’t have to be as big as full membership in short order. But it has to be substantial enough to retain the interest of these states. Otherwise, they will drift away towards other centres of power (the incoming Ukrainian president is notoriously close to Moscow and the Turkish president describes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his “good friend”). The ’soft power’ of all EU states is all the weaker as a result.