When reviewing its Presidency of the EU during the second half of 2005, the British government will undoubtedly regard as one of its successes the start of accession negotiations on October 3 with Turkey. The British government has long been an enthusiastic advocate of Turkish membership, and willingly invested much time and diplomatic effort to ensure that the negotiations began on the agreed date, despite the last-minute reservations of Austria.
In its advocacy of Turkish accession, Tony Blair’s government is not confronted with the same hostile public opinion as are the French, Dutch or even German governments from their domestic electorates. There is no generalised opposition in the UK to Turkish membership, and had there been a British referendum on the EU’s constitutional treaty it is hard to believe that the Turkey issue would have played a significant role.
But it should be stressed that British public opinion is quiescent rather than deeply engaged when it comes to Turkey. Because there is an elite consensus in favour of Turkey’s membership, there is no obvious political rallying-point for potential opponents. If and when Turkish entry becomes an imminent reality, British public attitudes will no doubt crystallize. The possibility at that point of populist opposition to Turkish membership cannot be discounted.
Both British public and élite opinion have in general favoured EU enlargement over the past 10 years. This derives in part from a belief that a wider European Union will be incapable of the deeper political integration that successive British governments have opposed. Also, strategic arguments concerning stability in the Middle East and the need for a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism are widely regarded in the UK as reinforcing the case for Turkish membership. A parallel argument is sometimes (although less often) heard in favour of Croatia’s accession to the EU, namely that it would contribute to the political stabilization of the western Balkans. Amongst the British elite, the Turkey question is debated much more than the prospects of other candidate, or potential candidate, countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia.
There is amongst British politicians, electors and opinion-formers a widespread perception that the European Union is in an existential crisis, having “lost touch” with its citizens by pursuing an agenda of institutional reform that has little relevance to the needs and interests of the average European, whether employer, employee or consumer. The Union will be unable to “reconnect” with its citizens unless and until it is able to demonstrate that it can contribute to the resolution of the continent’s problems, and particularly its economic challenges. This analysis underlies the high importance given by the UK’s EU Presidency to progress on the Lisbon agenda, which sets out to accelerate the modernization of Europe’s economies and thereby enhance their global competitiveness.
Successive British governments have always seen the European Union as primarily an economic arrangement, whereby nation states trade a portion of their national sovereignty for improved economic performance. It is therefore unsurprising that Tony Blair and his colleagues now see economic reform mediated through the EU as the best road the Union can take to recapture the hearts of its citizens.
Although this approach commends itself to many in London, its implementation is confronted with a number of difficulties. There is no consensus within the Union as to the nature and pace of economic reform, and the EU’s member states largely retain for themselves the legal competences necessary to make a reality of such reform. The Lisbon agenda is failing because it lacks the Europe-wide legal instruments to achieve the ambitious goals it has set itself. More fundamentally, it is far from clear that the disconnnection between Europe’s leaders and its citizens is simply a matter of economics. Some, perhaps many, of those in France and the Netherlands who voted against the EU’s constitutional treaty did so because they saw the coherence and even identity of the European Union as being threatened by its apparently never-ending enlargement, particularly to Turkey. It is not at all clear that their concerns can be allayed by a purely economic prospectus, even a successful one. The British view that the European Union stands or falls by its perceived economic success is not universally shared throughout the European continent.