Yayin Tarihi:19 Ocak/January 1998
TURKEY'S PLACE IN THE NEW ARCHITECTURE OF EUROPE
An Updated Assessment
By
Mehmet ÖGÜTÇÜ
Jean Monnet Fellow
October 1992 Bruges & Paris
Continued from part II - published on 16 Ocak/January 1998
III- EMERGING NEW ARCHITECTURE OF EUROPE
1- LIVING WITHOUT COLD WAR CLARITY -- The Cold War, starting with the Communist takeover in Prague in 1948 and ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, lasted more than a generation. This period left a lasting impression on both people and institutions in the West. The political revolution in Eastern Europe and the ensuing Soviet disintegration defied any prediction. No one had dared to imagine that such radical political changes could be so swift, so decisive and so orderly in the absence of anticipation. None of the participatory actors appeared to have designed exactly what happened. We are, as Toffler tells us, entering the age of 'powershift'. Old structures of power are breaking down while radically different structures of power are yet to take form. We have now moved from bipolarity to multipolarity. The East-West divide has been replaced by a great many localized tensions. There are the conflicts between different nationalities resulting from the mixed ethnic backgrounds of the populations of the former Soviet bloc countries and dating back to the period before and after the First World War. The economic upheavals are causing serious social tensions. Despite the USA's military success in the Gulf, the end of the Cold War has marked a 'visible decline in America's role'. Nowhere is this decline more visible than in the economic sphere. In the 1980's the US was transformed from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor with an expected payment this year of $ 293 billion only in interest - more than the cost of the Pentagon budget. Kennedy predicts that the USA goes the way of the British Empire in the first half of this century, while Japan and Germany are poised to return as global powers. This is perhaps an over-statement of what's happening. Nevertheless, it is most likely that German unification and accelerated pace of European integration would not only ensure Germany's emergence as a global economic power, but would also accentuate the frictions among the EC, Japan and the US. Washington will thus face a serious challenge for global domination from Tokyo and a 'fortress Europe' led by Bonn. Yet none of these challengers can match, in the foreseeable future, the military might of the US, which provides it with an important leverage in global affairs.
Germany's role in this newly emerging architecture deserves further attention. In Spring 1990, as German unity began to take shape, the Federal Republic of Germany and France launched an initiative to speed up the integration of the European Community and the Political Union. It was hoped that this would dispel any suspicion that united Germany could turn its back on the West and return to a "seesawing policy" as in the 19th century. Unification brought not just the economic and psychological problems of 16 million citizens used to living under dictatorship; it changed the nature of the nation, both internally and in its external relations. The restoration of full, legal sovereignty removed the excuse for not taking a full role on the world's stage. While the German government was accused of hanging back in the Kuwaiti crisis and on the outbreak of the Gulf war, it is now, after championing diplomatic recognition of Slovenia and Croatia, accused of being too self-assured and arrogant. This has played into the hands of those who felt that it was in any case time Germans could stop apologising. United Germany, with 80 million citizens and Europe's largest economy, is asserting itself as never before in post-war history. One of the recent examples has been the German decision to suspend unilaterally (without consulting its EC partners and NATO allies) weapons shipment to Turkey, a NATO ally, because some of the German arms had been used against Kurdish rebels. Bonn's style did upset its allies. TIME, in its cover story "Germany: New Muscles, Old Fears" points out that the former, far more modest West Germany, would have worked quietly behind the scenes to obtain allied consensus on arms transfers or to persuade Turkey to behave less harshly. The British sharply criticized the Bundesbank for "rigid" monetary policies and decided to withdraw the pound indefinitely mid-September from the fixed parity zone of the EMS. Such examples are not difficult to multiply.
Germany is no doubt assuming an assertive leadership role in European foreign policy. It has a prominent role in the task of guiding European parts of the former Soviet territory through its post-communist crisis. At the UN headquarters, there has been constant talk of giving Germany a permanent role in the Security Council. Bonn's first tentative move to become a permanent member of the UNSC has come up against a "solid wall" of resistance from Britain and France, who said by pressing its cause Germany would be opening a Pandora's Box. London and Paris want the German drive to stop in its tracks - otherwise demands from Asia, Africa and Latin America will be difficult to ignore. At the European Community, Bonn is poised for a power play that could determine not only the pace of European integration, but also Europe's place in the new world order. The Germans are often accused of acting out of ruthless self-interest and with self-aggrandizement. This is not exactly what the neighbours had in mind. One of the ideas of NATO, the EC and other post-war institutions has been to lock Germany into a European structure, not the other way around. As the largest contributor - 28 %, which will come to $ 23 bn this year - Bonn is unwilling to accept an EC budget that it considers too generous in its subsidization of agriculture and transfer payments to the poorer members. The Germans are also warning that they will not tolerate any retreat from the strict standards set at Maastricht for monetary union. There is a growing feeling among European financial and political analysts that Germany's high interest rates and determination to maintain an inflation proof mark have contributed significantly to the recessionary or low growth cycles that grip the entire continent. The growing preeminence of Germany worries most the French political leaders whose entire post-war policy relied on using German power to enhance their own may be coming unstuck. The German government has issued countless statements and declarations emphasising the continuity of the German policy. The Rome NATO summit and the Maastricht EC summit late last year marked important milestones at which Bonn showed with actions, not just words, that Germany could still be relied on politically. So why does mistrust still continually resurface? It is perhaps the result of presumed inevitabilities of European history and geography and is based on the expectation that a Germany freed from the trauma of division and with its sovereignty fully restored will be staking a claim to great power status in keeping with its economic clout. This is already and inevitably taking place. We can say that the German policy will long be regarded with mistrust, for at least as long as the darkest chapter in German history is still within living memory. One should not also ignore the fact that the Germans have been somehow 'communitarized' over the past 35 years and, if the 'federal union' goal will one day be attained, Germany may then be regarded only as a powerful 'federated state' of the Union that is economically more resourceful and prosperous than the others. If the Maastricht Treaty stalls, warns political observers, then we may see a return to traditional policies of the German nation-state, with Bonn feeling free to break out and go its own way.
The recent dramatic changes on the world scene have signalled that a new world order is coming into existence to replace the structure of international relations forged during the Cold War period. The first suggestion of a new world order is generally attributed to the Gorbachev's address at the UN General Assembly in December 1988. This concept has re-emerged after the Saddam's aggression against Kuwait, most notably, in a speech by President Bush on 11 September 1990, who cited an emerging world order as one of his war objectives. Yet in recent months the US has been keeping quiet about it. The reason might be the frustration with the 'unfinished business' in the Gulf as well as the American voters' concern with jobs and economic growth and not with some "airy-fairy" conception of a new world order. There is certainly a new world; but it is difficult to say if there is any order in the sense of a coherent and structured framework for future international policy. The defining characteristics of the new world are, it appears for the time being, pictures of disorder and unpredictability.
In domestic debates, the key question has now become whether Washington will recognize the need to put economics at the heart of future security policies. In today's world, battles will have to be won on the economic front. Yet, to the great dismay of the Europeans, the power of the old diplomatic paradigm - which equates national security with military power - was visible in a leaked Pentagon policy paper, arguing that the US should seek to prevent any other nation or 'group of nations' from challenging its role as the world's single superpower. Though the White House tried to play down this paper, the implication was clear: military spending should remain high enough to enable the US to serve as a 'world policeman' for the foreseeable future. Needless to say, such a strategy requires a large defence budget, something which the US economy simply cannot afford at present. Although the US is and will remain large, rich and powerful, its post-war dominance over the Western world which was essentially due to the East-West conflict, has considerably lessened for obvious reasons. Kissinger underlines that during most of the post-war period, the shared security concern had caused competing interests to take a back seat and that in the years ahead, Europe may not find the need for American protection so compelling. However, one might be tempted to argue that the new conditions make the US involvement more necessary than ever, although it cannot continue along the old pattern. For one thing, the Soviet collapse has not completely ended every potential threat from the east. Russia is still far larger and has a much more numerous population than any single European state. And it continues to retain thousands of nuclear warheads, far exceeding any conceivable European nuclear potential. One additional concern is that Germany has become so strong that existing European institutions cannot by themselves establish a balance between Germany and its partners, even less between Germany and the former Soviet Union. If Russia and Germany tend to come too close, asserts Kissinger (a prominent member of the realist school), they might raise the danger of hegemony, concluding that without America, Britain and France cannot sustain the political balance in Western Europe. The validity of this argument will depend largely on how the intra-Community relations are to be handled and weighted in the next few years between Bonn, Paris, London and Rome. If the esprit communautaire prevails, the Union can proceed as envisioned toward the United States of Europe without giving rise to any fears of hegemony.
2- MAASTRICHT DECISIONS: A TURNING POINT ? - The result of the Maastricht summit last December should be judged on the basis of two key issues. First, the economic and monetary union, on which an important agreement set the date (1999, or possibly 1997) for the creation of a Central European Bank with powers to issue a single currency. Second, the issue is how to tackle the EC's democratic deficit. In comparison to these decisions, the agreements on European social issues, cohesion, security and internal policy take second place, despite the intensity with which they were debated, since they do not significantly challenge the sovereignty of member states. The newly defined European Union would have three distinct pillars: the orthodox and consolidated Community pillar, a common foreign and security policy pillar, connected to the EC but not subsumed in it; and a third pillar dealing separately with internal order, reworking the Schengen model for a group of Twelve. This new model has emerged from the Maastricht Summit, though not exactly as planned by the French & German axis. The Treaties of Maastricht mark a great step forward in the emergence of a European superpower. The most important decision, setting up a single currency, is really putting into a concrete form something which the Community has been trying to achieve for the past 20 years. If things proceed smoothly without any major crisis by 1999, Europe looks likely to have a single currency with a home market bigger than the dollar and far larger than the yen. The ECU will be the most important currency in the world. To clinch the agreement, other ambitious plans for a stronger European Parliament and wider Commission powers had to be watered down. They show that the European states are still genuinely committed, 35 years after they started on their course, to the idea of "an ever-closer union". Even though the term 'federal union' was suppressed so as not to break ranks with Britain, the evolutionary character of the Union was underlined. The 'federal' Europe might arguably be a more proper description of what went on in Maastricht and what will happen over the rest of this decade. The process moves forward, sometimes slowly, but all the time increasing the extent to which the truly key issues are being decided outside the old nations and usually at a European level. The EC leaders, in the post-Maastricht period, face two immediate challenges on the road to a United States of Europe: the 12 existing members must finance the costly new responsibilities that have been undertaken - notably assistance to the relatively poorer states before their deadline of 1999 for a common currency and a queue of nations, headed by Turkey, some EFTA member states, Malta and Greek Cyprus, is eager to join the new Union. The Eastern and Central European countries are also hopeful for future accession. If the federal union is not achieved in due time, the EC will lack the capability to act as a global power and, face the risk of balkanization in the old continent instead of europeanization. The lessons of last year are that a divided continent is a powerless one. Nowhere has this been clearer than in former Yugoslavia where a bloody civil war has taken thousands of lives while the EC has sat wringing its hands, negotiating ceasefire after ceasefire.
The feasibility of the Maastricht decisions has been, in certain member states, seriously questioned. Calls for a re-negotiation of the Maastricht compromise has caused a sense of disappointment and alarm in Brussels. The ratification of the Treaty by all the national parliaments is not definite yet. Only four nations - France, Greece, Ireland and Luxembourg - have so far approved the accord, while the Danish already turned it down last June. The Danish prime minister Poul Schluter stated that only by "meeting special Danish problems with legally binding amendments to the Maastricht Treaty" could the way be opened for a second, favourable referandum in Denmark next year. Beyond the strengthening of the principle of subsidiarity in the Tearty - which is regarded as essential by all EC members - he indicated that the "special Danish problems" covered monetary union, common European defence and social policy. He described an opting-out clause on the third and final stage of monetary union - akin to the one negotiated at Maastricht by Britain - as a "possible solution". The chief architects of Maastricht - the German, French and Italian governments -, almost a year on, are all in serious trouble. In Germany and Italy, the Christian Democratic parties that were the defining force behind the founding of the EEC are losing significant electorate ground. In Germany, the alarming rise of the far right, confirmed in the 5 April elections in the two lander and in Italy the rise of the Northern League are worrisome developments. In France's last regional elections, the far right and the Greens benefited the results while the ruling Socialists experienced a heavy defeat. The French have come to realize that Germany is sure to dominate the EC with or without political union. And in all three capitals, national problems are bulking now larger than at any time in the past decade. The Maastricht Treaty was in fact supposed to answer decisively what direction the Community would take for the next decade or two. But having accepted by only an exceedingly narrow majority of France's voters, after having been rejected by an even narrower majority in Denmark, the Treaty clearly does not command sufficient public support to carry out its enormous purposes. Two different concepts have wrestled for control of the EC's future. One was essentially political, pushing toward the ideal of supranational government, using commerce as a device to bring people closer together. The idea in the early decades was to make another European war impossible; more recently, it was to create a unified European power capable of standing as a counterweight to the United States and Japan. The governments of the original six members - France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries - hoped to advance that purpose with the Maastricht Treaty. The other side of the debate argues that the Community's purpose is to get rich - that it is a trading area whose members are separate and sovereign countries, and that it ought to stay that way. That is the Gaullist view of Europe, currently represented most forcefully by the British. It is possible that the 12 countries will refuse to choose between these two visions of their future. They may insist on both. That would mean a core consisting of France, Germany, Benelux and perhaps a few others moving toward Union in the North American sense of the word, with a common currency and an increasingly strong European Parliament. Surrounding that core, the other members would continue to be part of the present free trade area in which four freedoms prevail without much regard to borders. The Maastricht debate in EC countries has shown that there is a wide gap between governments and their publics. While governments are on the look-out for a new Continent, their publics widely feel either "interned below deck" or left behind. True though it may be that foreign policy and diplomacy are ill-suited as for direct democratic participation, there can be no denying that there will be no European integration unless it enjoys public support. The implications of the Maastricht process, it seems certain, will continue to be felt deeply on the process of European integration in the long years to come.
3- THE EUROPEAN SECURITY ARCHITECTURE - The European politico- strategic situation has radically changed over the past few years. We have seen the threat of massive attack from the USSR and its satellites recede and the emergence of new risks. At the same time the Gulf Crisis has proved that the threats now facing Europe no longer come from only one direction and has provided all too tangible evidence of the danger of a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Thus the need arouse to build a framework of interlocking institutions defining a new European security architecture. The EC in its process of integration, NATO and the CSCE have all responded in their own specific fields to the challenges posed over the past two years by Europe's new politico-strategic situation. The European security is now based on three mutually reinforcing pillars - NATO, WEU and CSCE - in which NATO, the principal point of reference of the entire system, interacts with the other two. NATO's future dimensions and outlook will be greatly influenced by the creation of the European Political Union. It is now clear that the WEU will become the security identity of the Community as well as the European pillar of the NATO, but it is far from clear how these two functions will be aligned and orchestrated in the years ahead. What seems certain is that NATO will also be transformed by the new phase of Community construction in the EC; that the Europeans will have to carry a larger share of the burden of the common defence and that some members will worry about their possible marginalisation within the new structure. The WEU has taken the necessary steps towards forming the European pillar in NATO by inviting non-EC European NATO allies to become associate members of the organisation. Nevertheless, NATO is still the main security body, not only for its members but also for the new democracies in Central & Eastern Europe. Hence, the issue is no longer how to contain and deter a specific enemy, to dissuade him from mounting and executing particular threats. It is, rather, one of providing residual insurance against unspecified dangers in an uncertain world, uncertainties stemming more from the interplay of economic, social and ethnic forces in weak and volatile societies striving to overcome the vestiges of generations of communist oppression, mismanagement and exploitation. Old animosities and conflicts could re-emerge and others be added as they seek to fashion new identities, roles and relations in the international arena.
The CSCE, institutionalised by the Paris Summit of November 1990, is the main forum for political consultations and crisis management on a pan-European basis and is indeed regarded as the standard-bearer of democratic legitimacy, as we saw in the invocation of the CSCE principles as a condition for the recognition of the new states in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The drawbacks of the CSCE, namely the lack of proper institutionalisation, have been recognized, and attempts are being made to correct them. In particular, the means of the newly established Conflict Prevention Center, originally proposed at NATO's London Summit, will have to be further strengthened. The Allied proposal made in Rome last November to suspend the rule of unanimity in the CSCE in certain circumstances to allow political measures to be taken against states violating the Helsinki Final Act or Charter of Paris is particularly significant. The CSCE was extended to include all the republics of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. This enlargement by a dozen new sovereign states in addition to the three Baltic ones has indeed turned the CSCE into a Eurasian affair with a marked Asian-Islamic accentuation. The admission of the ex-Soviet Republics - in part as a result of energetic efforts of Turkey - to the North Atlantic "Cooperation Council" has also been realized. The idea of a 'house of security from Vancouver to Vladivostok' across the North Atlantic and Eurasia would be, if realized, the most extensive geo-political construction since the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire or the British Empire. The question is however whether North America and Europe have enough common political ground and the necessary power to back up such a big step. If not, Ruhl foresees, this construction will become the "Tower of Babel of the 20th Century". With 51 states today and perhaps even more tomorrow, the CSCE will remain an unwieldy process which may well find it difficult to achieve broad consensus due to the inhomogeneous composition of its membership. It also lacks the effective means to enforce its decisions. The question for the CSCE is now how its 'experience' can be best employed in future to extinguish conflicts, not just in ex-Yugoslavia and Nagorna-Karabakh, where it already failed, but also in Georgia, Moldova and even Tadjikhistan, and to prevent potential crises from exploding. The new CSCE buzz-words are therefore conflict prevention, crisis management, protection of minorities and peace-keeping.
As for the future of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which bears great importance for European security, nearly one year into its existence, it is seemingly marching towards collapse. In fact, the CIS was never planned as a federal state in the German or American sense. It has merely marked another stage in the final collapse of the Soviet hegemony. Ethnic conflicts, economic anarchy and military rivalries have placed intolerable pressures on the loose association of 11 former Soviet republics established last December in Minsk. The 'final nail in the coffin', as Barber eloquently put it, was almost certainly Russia's decision to create its own Defence ministry. Previously, Russia had advocated that the CIS should maintain a united military force, combining conventional as well as nuclear units. But Yeltsin appears to have concluded that the disintegration of the ex-Soviet armed forces into separate national entities is inevitable. That view is apparently shared by the president of Kazakhistan, Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev, who said his republic will create its own national guard. Meanwhile, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Azerbaijan have covered quite a distance towards the creation of their own armed forces and other republics are sure to follow suit. The security implications of such a fragmented entities are obviously unpredictable and pose a serious risk for the Western Alliance.
The prevailing trends can be perceived only as general directions. The former Soviet power sphere is threatened by violence and chaos while the Western countries are no longer united by a 'useful enemy'. The list of crisis situations that have so far emerged in the post- Cold War era, is a rather long one: the Gulf War, which failed to materialize its initially declared goals; the Yugoslav civil war now raging in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the resultant emergence of new states in the Balkans altering significantly the traditional balance of power; the Nagorna-Karabakh conflict in the Trans-Caucasia; the Georgian-Abakzha conflict and the Russian-Ukrainian rivalry to name just a few. The region west of what was previously the Soviet Union is also torn by internal conflict and tensions, primarily between Poles and Lithuanians, Czechs and Slovaks, Hungarians and Romanians. Practically, all political forces from Estonia to Bulgaria (Russia, too) look to the West, seeking membership in the European Community, the Council of Europe, the OECD and, if possible, also in NATO, in an effort both to assert European identity and to cope with the current problems of development and conflict. The Western connection is generally seen in these countries as a necessary prerequisite of mastering the great difficulties which have piled up in the socialist past.
In the face of such a situation, it seems that the security dimension of the European architecture will become more important than ever in the period ahead. The Western Alliance system NATO-WEU-European Community, it is widely believed, provides the only support for the still unstable and unbalanced European security constellation. The CSCE is, in its current form, far from constituting a collective security system. Complementary nature of these organisations are often talked about, suggesting that none of them alone can ensure a credible security blanket for the Eurasian region. The events in and concerning Europe since 1989 teach us that the future is not crisis-free and that the European security cannot only or not even primarily be guaranteed by political and economic means without military power. This is even more relevant in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Caucasus region. The threats or, in the words of the NATO's 'New Strategic Concept', "risks" are now multi-directional. The risks embedded in this dimension cannot be covered in Europe and by European means alone. In an increasingly interdependent world, Europe is more vulnerable than ever before to the events beyond its borders as the world is entering a period of great instability. Many long-standing international rivalries and resentments persist and are compounded by ethnic and religious factors. Nationalism is on the rise. Domestic disintegration threatens a number of sovereign states, and there is an increasing demand for international intervention in humanitarian emergencies and human rights violations. Poverty and deep economic inequities are dramatized by instant world-wide communication. Population pressures, vast economic migrations, ecological disasters, and imminent scarcities of essential natural resources all contribute to the growth of instability in many parts of the globe. Unlike during the Cold War years, the stability is not the natural by-product of a frozen geo-political situation. For a sustainable stability in Europe and around it, a substantial contribution of outer-European effort (read this as the USA) will be just as essential as it was during the East-West confrontation of the Cold War period. The NATO Secretary-General, a Europeanist, Worner, shows the way out: "A responsible, pragmatic internationalism is the real alternative for Europe". This must be based on the concept of partnership and on co-operative structures that tie the three power centres of the globe - the US, Europe and Japan - closely together. Neither Japan, nor Europe can replace the US in its leadership function. The US role is crucial in determining whether international relations become increasingly well ordered or sink instead into increasing disorder. But only if Japan and Europe assume more responsibilities in partnership with the US will the advanced industrial democracies be able to uphold the global momentum towards democracy and market economy.
An interesting and significant trend in the new European architecture is the emergence of closer economic groupings of the "regionalized" nature. In other words, attention has been brought to the issue of regional economic integration because it has increasingly involved contiguous or "geographically close" countries. Apart from the 'regions of Europe' gaining currency in the Community literature and practice, some member states are moving towards forging new sub-regional groupings inside the EC or in co-operation with non-EC member neighbouring countries. The latest effort in this direction has been the revival of historic, trading and cultural links between all the countries bordering the Baltic Sea. The Danish foreign minister, Mr. Uffe Elleman-Jensen remarked, during a ministerial meeting on 5 March 1992, that, 10 years from now, all the Baltic states would be either members of the EC, or closely linked to it and that it would be possible to speak of a Baltic Community as a region within the EC. The fundamental aim of this German-Danish initiative, bringing together Germany, Russia, Poland, all the Scandinavian countries and the three newly-independent Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is defined as aligning the former communist states of the region firmly into the Western democratic and free market system. The meeting also decided to establish a Council of the Baltic Sea States, to function as a regional forum for intensified co-operation and co- ordination of policies in the areas ranging from trade to the environment, energy, transport, communications, education, culture and humanitarian aid. Italy,too, has already pioneered the launch of a similar sub-regional initiative, namely the Hexagonal (soon to be renamed "Central European Initiative) with its immediate neighbours - Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and ex-Yugoslavia. With a history of less than three years, the Hexagonal has ambitiously embarked upon 119 projects in various areas. Another noteworthy initiative is the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Zone (BSECZ), which we shall look at later in detail. Such regional cooperation initiatives in Europe could provide suitable instruments for the dissemination of certain norms and standards, principles and policies and to prepare new European democracies for a smooth integration into the European and eventually the world system. They offer broad opportunities in this respect from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and from the Adriatic to the Caspian Sea.
4- HOW FAR ENLARGEMENT PROCESS WILL GO? -- When asked why Austria had not applied for EC membership in the late 1970s or early 1980s - perhaps at the time when Spain and Portugal had applied - an Austrian diplomat has compared the EC, looking back to that time, to a snail. One had to look very closely to see in which direction it was moving or whether it was even moving at all. Today the EC is quite different compared to what it was 10 years ago. It has now become the basic 'anchor' and framework for all West European and increasingly pan-European activities for further integration and co-operation. And the European architecture in the 1990s is likely to be based on the EC, moving further in the direction of a federation. There is an increased demand for the full membership by European countries outside the EC as a result of two major developments: the successful evolution of the EC-Europe [Single European Act, Internal Market, EMU and Political Union] and the revolution in East Europe & the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia [leading to a decreased engagement of superpowers in Europe and creation of democratic & market oriented economies in those countries]. Even the established democracies and successful economies and welfare states such as Sweden and Switzerland are confronted with growing internal doubts about their specific virtues and special role in the world and have made the fateful decision of being part of the EC system.
The countries of Central and Eastern Europe view the Community as an essential partner, who can assist them in "rejoining Europe", thus ending the artificial divisions of past decades. The Community has responded positively to this desire insofar as decisive steps have been taken in the creation of systems based on the principles of democracy and market-oriented economy. These steps concern the areas of : the rule of law, respect for human rights, the establishment of multiparty systems, the holding of free and fair elections, and economic liberalisation with a view to introducing market economies in these formerly communist countries. Thus, following almost a year of negotiations, Europe Agreements were signed in December 1991 with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, known also as the partners-in-transition (PIT). The European Parliament ratified the Europe Agreements signed with Poland and Hungary in September 1992, but postponed the debate the one with Czechoslovakia because of the forthcoming division of this country, which may require a substantial renegotiation if the two successor states fail during the coming months to set up a sufficiently deep customs union between themselves. The Commission hopes that the two Association Agreements with Romania and Bulgaria, negotiated since Spring 1992, will be signed before the end of this year. They represent a forward-looking, revised model in some areas when compared with the 1963 Association Agreement with Turkey. As the EC prefers to operate on the basis of the precedents, the 'Europe' Agreements may be taken as a useful, starting reference for Turkey in the future talks with the Community negotiators for a sui generis status. Some of the assymetrical measures proposed in the Europe Agreements drew sharp reaction from certain member states, worried about the threat to their domestic producers of the free inflow of most East European competitive products. France, for instance, had blocked the conclusion of these agreements until the very last moment, attempting to reduce the meaningfulness of the 'accelerated' Association Agreements in textile, steel and agricultural products. Most people in Central and Eastern Europe consider the EC as a "mythical attraction", a panacea for all their problems, an ideal they should strive to attain, although they are usually not well-acquainted with what the Community really stands for. In fact, the Eastern and Central European & former Soviet states do not fit into a uniform category. They have different levels of economic development. The EC does not therefore offer the same treatment to all these countries and instead pursue a selective policy approach. This produces justifiably resentment among them. For example, Romania and Bulgaria feel relegated to a second-class club of ex- communist countries, behind the first class trio of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, which is visibly favoured by Germany. Poland, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic have sought to speak with one voice in their contacts to secure effective concessions from the EC. Foreign Ministers of these three countries (known as the Visegrad Trio) presented on 5 October 1992 a formal request to begin EC membership negotiations by 1996 with a view to entering the Community by the end of the century during their first official meeting with EC Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg. The response from the EC was non-committal.
As for the EFTA member states, Brussels initially hoped that the negotiations for the European Economic Area (EEA) would satisfy the aspirations of the EFTA member countries for closer relations with the EC and discourage new applications for accession. The EEA is, however, destined to be short-lived, as most EFTA countries have applied or are about to apply for full membership. The seven EFTA countries agreed to the wholesale adoption of some 10.000 pages of the existing Single Market legislation, forming the core of the EEA rules. The key dispute was over future judicial interpretation of common EEA laws, as court judgements can significantly alter the impact of a law. A mixed EEA Court of EC and EFTA judges would have ensured uniform interpretation of laws. Or so it seemed until last December when the European Court of Justice effectively struck down the joint panel idea, claiming it jeopardised its own autonomy in determining what was the Community law. The EFTA countries have come from being a basic free-trade area, when EFTA was first set up in 1960, to something close to a Single Market. The EEA, which should come into force at the beginning of 1993, links EFTA with the EC in all the four freedoms provided by the EC's 1992 Internal Market Programme. The principle of a European Union open to European states that aspire to full participation and who fulfil the conditions for membership is a fundamental element of the European construction. The European Council in Maastricht agreed that negotiations on accession to the Union can start as soon as the Community has terminated its negotiations on own resources and related issues in 1992. And the Lisbon Summit has paved the way for opening enlargement negotiations with a view to an early conclusion with EFTA countries seeking membership of the EC, inviting the Commission to speed up preparatory work needed to ensure rapid progress including the preparation before the European Council in Edinburgh late this year of the EC's general negotiation framework. The official negotiation will be opened immediately after the Treaty on European Union is ratified and the agreement has been achieved on the Delors-II Package. The enthusiasts for enlargement in the Commission point to the way that rich EFTA countries coming in could help both with the quest for economic and monetary union and the mounting argument over the Community's budget. They point out that all members of the first wave would be rich enough to be net contributors to the EC's budget, and rigorously managed enough to qualify early for EMU. The southern members, which are counting on the EC providing more regional and structural funds, will know that they are more likely to get it if they let the rich EFTA countries in. Yet, enlargement could be blocked, for the formal position at the moment is that negotiations will not start until the Maastricht Treaty is ratified. Countries such as France, Spain and Portugal have never been enthusiastic enlargers. They believe that the EC needs to "deepen" as it "widens", meaning that it should reform its institutions lest the arrival of new members paralyses its decision-making procedure. These countries agreed to speedy enlargement because Maastricht held out the promise of a more federal constitution. Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries are keener to let in new comers, but still argue that it would be wrong to enlarge without changing EC institutions.
Nevertheless, the crucial question is not clearly addressed yet whether the current EC model of integration is appropriate as the basis for incorporating the candidate members or not. In the past, the integration option was not available to all Europeans because of the 'iron curtain' cleavage. Some West Europeans (such as EFTA countries) preferred to stay out while some Southern Europeans (such as Turkey, Cyprus and Malta) were deliberately kept at a distance. But, now with the demise of the Cold War order and the emergence of the Community as a pole of attraction, the notion of "Europe" needs to be redefined - from the narrow usage coined by the EC to a more broader interpretation. The further enlargement has become inevitable; but the contradictions between deepening and widening and the issue of where the borders of Europe stop do not seem to be resolved. There are a number of scenarios about how best the current enlargement process can be realised without undermining the established acquis communautaire. One to which we feel close is a proposal put forth by a senior Italian diplomat-politician, Mr. Ruggiero. He warns against advancing 'case-by-case', arguing that once the most difficult cases are resolved, it would be impossible to refuse those what has been granted others. So what to do ? First, he suggests, proceed even before membership of the EFTA countries with a radical change in the institutional structure (this is what the Commission keeps telling). Then, check for the existence of two conditions - political democracy and the existence of a process of economic convergence. It is better to proceed by groups of countries (eg: EFTA, Central and Eastern Europe, Mediterranean, Baltic, some republics of the former Soviet Union). The critical factor is time, thus the organisation of transition through the setting up of special structures. Instead of "concentric circles", Ruggiero sees a structure that could be qualified as confederal with several communities based on the EC model, of which the latter would be a member, and which in turn would take part under certain conditions in the work of the EC. The degrees of development would be different but the structures similar. He says "we would thus create a synchronised movement going in the same direction and towards the same goal". We are of the opinion that if the Community is going to widen beyond the EFTA countries, the above proposal gives "food for thought" for a viable solution on which an integration model can be detailed.
The Lisbon Summit, while discussing further enlargement, took up the applications of Turkey, Cyprus and Malta as well and concluded that each application must be considered on its merits. With regard to Turkey, the European Council underlined that the Turkish role in the present European political situation is of the greatest importance and that there is every reason to intensify cooperation and develop relations with Turkey in line with the prospect laid down in the Association Agreement of 1963 including a political dialogue at the highest level. The European Council, the highest decision-making body of the EC, asked the Commission and the Council to work on this basis in the coming months.
Having discussed a fairly wide range of issues to provide a brief outlook of Turkey's historical ties with Europe and of the new European architecture still in the process of settling down, we may perhaps now proceed towards an analysis of the Turco-Community relationship as it stands with a view to establishing Turkey's place in the new European construction as well as to highlighting the future options ahead of both sides.
IV. AN UPDATED ASSESSMENT OF THE TURCO-COMMUNITY RELATIONS (1987-1992)
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