The government of Finland - which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union - is making an all-out effort to ensure that negotiations with Turkey on its application to join the EU are not wrecked by disagreements over Cyprus. In their summit in Brussels on 14-15 December 2006, EU heads of government must decide whether the talks can be kept on track or whether a major crisis in relations with Turkey is now unavoidable.
The question of Turkey's future relationship with the European Union is strategically important, but there is an even bigger unanswered question hovering over the entire debate: what will be and what should be the limits to the geographical enlargement of the EU?
It is a question given new salience by the crisis in relations between Russia and Georgia (whose government has made no secret of its desire to join the union at some future date). It is raised too by the fact that two rivals in the southern Caucasus, Armenia and Azerbaijan (with whom Europe has increasingly important energy links), harbour the same ambition.
John Palmer has written about European affairs for many years, notably as European editor of the Guardian. He is a member of the governing board of the European Policy Centre and was formerly its political director. He writes in a personal capacity
An interview with John Palmer, "Beyond the EU: a European Commonwealth and a new world order" (September 2006) is here
Also by John Palmer in openDemocracy:
"After France: Europe's route from wreckage"
(May 2005)
"The 'nation'-state is not enough"
(December 2005)
"The levels of democracy"
(January 2006)
"Europe's enlargement problem"
(23 May 2006)
"Europe's foreign policy: saying 'no' to the US?"
(12 September 2006)
The EU gave approval on 26 September 2006 for Bulgaria and Romania to join in January 2007. But what will soon be the twenty-seven member-state union is already negotiating possible membership not only with Turkey but also with Croatia. Moreover, a promise in principle to consider their membership has also been given to Albania and other former Yugoslav republics - Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and (once its independent status has been agreed) Kosovo.
Even this is not the end of the story. Ukraine and Moldova have already made clear that they are working towards eventual EU accession as a major policy priority. Belarus has been told it cannot be even considered before its authoritarian regime has been replaced by democracy.
Thus, leaving aside for one moment the Turkish question, it is increasingly clear that EU leaders intend to halt further enlargement - for the foreseeable future - once the countries of the western Balkans have joined (perhaps towards the end of the 2010s). For the coming years the European Union needs to get its own house in order before it is remotely capable of taking responsibility for ever more members.
As well as continuing economic reform, the EU faces a major negotiation to fix its long-term future budget for the next decade and beyond. Above all, it must finally agree on how to streamline, strengthen and democratise its own decision-making institutions. The hope is that by the end of 2008 agreement will finally be reached on a new treaty (which, I suspect, will look rather similar to the one already approved by fifteen member-states but which was rejected by France and the Netherlands in May-June 2005).
A third way
Assuming all of this falls into place - a new treaty by 2008, a new budget deal by 2010, and the beginning of the final stage of "classical" enlargement with the western Balkans and Turkey - what then? There appear to be two, equally problematic, options. The first is that classical enlargement continues until it reaches Vladivostok (or beyond). This is difficult to see. Even with radical reform, the EU could not be expected to integrate so many peoples, leaping over so many time-zones and with such diverse national environments.
The second option is to choose "friendship", "cooperation", "neighbourhood relations" and other apple-pie links with the European Union's neighbours to the east. But what does that mean in practice? Very little. Aspirant EU member-countries in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and beyond know that without actual "membership" they would have almost no real leverage, if any at all, over their European partners.
Until now it has been assumed that anything a European country joins should be the EU as it is. But there might be a different way of looking at all of this. The third possibility is something I would describe as a European Commonwealth. It would have some similarities with the EU, but would demand less in terms of shared sovereignty and the scale of common policies. This would require beginning to think about some limited forms of sovereignty-sharing and collective institutions that might unite an enlarged European Union with wider neighbours, maybe in two configurations: one involving countries to the east, and the other with Mediterranean neighbours whose circumstances are very different.
At present the response of EU leaders (both in Brussels and the member-states) is: "We can't do this. We have to deal bilaterally with each country separately and limit relations to cooperation agreements." But countries like Ukraine, Georgia and others will only accept these as a staging-post to eventual membership. They want eventual joint decision-making and a voice in a larger common European body so that they are not merely on the receiving end of decisions taken by the EU alone, but partners in a shared enterprise.
If such a commonwealth comes into being it is an open question whether Turkey might prefer that to joining the EU itself. That decision can only be taken sometime after 2015 when Turkey is ready and the EU as a whole too is ready for a much more ambitious relationship. For now the priority must be to keep the Turkish path to EU accession open. That is vital for continuing economic and political reform - above all for establishing a human-rights proof legal system in which the military are unambiguously under democratic civilian control.
A future European Commonwealth might have a limited mandate based on shared sovereignty and common law. But this could embrace important policy areas. After all, the current EU-Russia cooperation agreement signed in 2005 envisages - in theory - a common space for trade and economic development, a common area of security, a common system of "legal principles", and a common area for research and development. This would exclude other essential features of EU integration such as a common currency, a common internal market, and social and environmental policies.
Also in openDemocracy on Europe's democracy and Europe's future:
Mats Engstrőm, "Democracy is hard, but the only way"
(6 June 2005)
Simon Berlaymont, "What the European Union is"
(23 June 2005)
Krzysztof Bobinski, "Democracy in the European Union, more or less"
(27 July 2005)
Kalypso Nicolaïdis, "Europe and beyond: struggles for recognition"
(21 February 2006)
Frank Vibert, "'Absorption capacity': the wrong European debate"
(21 June 2006)
Aurore Wanlin, "Adieu, Europe?"
(29 June 2006)
Anthony Barnett, "The birth of Europe?"
(9 October 2006)
A leap across time
These questions are difficult and challenging, but they will not go away. Recently a senior Kazakh diplomat pointed out only half-humorously: "My country also has a vocation to be part of Europe. Indeed the parts of Kazakhstan which lie inside geographical Europe are larger than the territory of any existing EU member-state."
True, even a more limited sovereignty-sharing community - which might be envisaged as standing between a more internally integrated European Union and its important neighbours - would itself be conditional on acceptance of certain essential principles. These are set out in the existing EU Copenhagen criteria, agreed at a European Council meeting in the Danish capital in June 1993, and essentially deal with democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Whatever the outcome of the current negotiations with Turkey, an unending process of classical EU enlargement would soon exhaust the union's economic and political resources. The result might be a crisis which could wreck the EU and involve a serious destabilisation of the entire continent. But simply closing the door to Europe will certainly risk an equally destabilising backlash against reform and democratisation in the aspirant countries. The gradual construction of a larger, common "European home" might help to square this circle.
At some point this project might attract Russia itself. It is true that the present EU-Russia agreement remains a largely paper exercise, primarily because of Russia's regression on issues such as justice, democracy and the rights of the Chechens. But for countries prepared to make a reality of these goals a European Commonwealth could offer real decision-sharing with the EU on issues of vital common interest across Europe as a whole.
The building of a European Commonwealth by the EU and its eastern neighbours could also transform the potentially dangerous rivalries between Russia and the west being played out in the Caucasus and elsewhere, in much the way in which Franco-German rivalries were superseded by the creation of the European Community fifty years ago.