Growing Pains for the EU

The European Union is looking inward again, trying to cope with the prospect of a new generation of member nations, mainly from the former Communist bloc, that would nearly double its membership within a few years. The admission of as many as 13 new countries presents the Brussels-based union with problems it has not confronted before. A 28-nation EU might be ungovernable and would have to find ways to simplify decision-making.

The EU was set up in 1958 as a common market of six countries and has grown in steps of two or three ever since. Now, with a membership of 15, it has embarked once again on a rewriting of the founding Treaty of Rome. It hopes to have the new draft ready by the end of the year. Simultaneously this month the EU launched accession talks with six countries--Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta. They would be added to six other nations--Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus--which have already begun negotiating the terms of entry and are expected to join the EU within two or three years.

Former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing was right when he said on a recent visit to Los Angeles that the rush of newcomers of different political cultures, 23 different languages and a wide disparity of economic development presents the EU with the fundamental question of its purpose.

The 20-member European Commission, which runs the EU on a day-to-day basis, should not be expanded to give each new member a seat. Rather, the biggest member countries, such as France and Germany, entitled to two seats each, will have to give up one, and some smaller countries will have to do without.

The most difficult dilemma the EU reformers face is whether future decisions should be made by a majority or unanimous vote. The answer to this question will inevitably hinge on the extent to which the member countries themselves want to integrate. Clearly, clobbering recalcitrant countries into “harmony” by majority voting on everything from taxes to pensions would not take Europe forward.