The Growing Clout of Europe

The coming decade should be one of momentous, if plodding and confusing, change in Western Europe, and of a growing power and assertiveness on its side of the Atlantic that the United States will be forced to heed.

Already the world’s largest trading bloc with 15 members, the European Union by 2010 may count 20 to 30 members--and ultimately as many as 35. Five former Eastern Bloc nations and the Mediterranean island of Cyprus are already negotiating entry. Another half a dozen nations--Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Slovakia--will start formal talks this year. Last month, the union officially designated Turkey as a candidate for membership.

From economic issues to foreign affairs and security, Western European nations will be cooperating with one another more than ever. Greece is expected this year to join the euro, the single currency adopted as a unit of exchange last year by 11 EU countries. By 2002, the euro will exist as bank notes and coins.

The following year, the EU’s rapid-reaction corps of as many as 60,000troops is scheduled to become operational, perhaps the kernel of a future Pan-European army.

A bigger, more active European Union brings with it some difficult problems that need to be resolved. Founded in 1957 essentially to create an economic rationale for preventing future wars between France and Germany, the EU’s 15 members already have difficulty at times reaching agreements. Last month they split over tax policy.

“The central question for the coming years is: How do you enlarge to 30, 35 [members] and deepen the process of integration to make a real union,” says John Palmer, director of the European Policy Center, a Brussels think tank.

A response to that issue should come at the end of the year, with an expected treaty that would further reduce the right of a single EU member state to veto a collective decision.

As the European Union acquires more responsibilities, some are advocating a formal constitution that would transform it into a confederation or a federal system. Others, including conservatives from Britain’s Tories to France’s neo-Gaullists, are expected to remain leery of creating a Brussels-based superstate that they see as a threat to national sovereignty.

New countries probably will join the EU in two waves, in 2004 and 2006, giving the trade bloc even more clout in negotiations with the United States and other commercial partners and rivals. At present, the EU and U.S. economies are roughly of the same size. If the 13 most immediate candidates join the EU, the block’s economy in today’s terms would be about $1 trillion larger than that of the U.S.

Simultaneously, nine Eastern European nations and former Soviet republics are “recognized aspirants” to membership in the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. By 2002, the defense alliance will hold a summit to decide whether to expand, though few observers expect NATO to grow further at that time.

A more “Europeanized” NATO would meet the U.S. goal of having this continent’s nations do more for its own defense. But it also would be a further step in changing the transatlantic relationship from the current domination by Washington into one of more equal partners--another challenge for the U.S. role in Europe in the 21st century.