ISSUES FOR THE NEW EUROPE

(The Herald Tribune, 06/07/95)

Western Europe is deliberately using the magnetism of its prosperity as a force to stabilize the politics of its eastern neighbours. Most of them want desperately to join the European Union, but the Union has made it clear that admission is open only to countries that are democratic, respectful of human rights and at peace. The belligerent fragments of ex-Yugoslavia have been explicitly shut out since the fighting began. The message has not been lost on the rest of Eastern Europe.

At the final session of the European Union's meeting in Cannes last week, 26 countries were represented around the table - the present 15 members, plus 11 that hope to be admitted within the next decade. They are drawn only partly by the trade advantages and the prospect of greater investment and development aid. The Eastern countries yearn to be regarded not as exotic and expendable border lands but as integral to the common European culture and public life that the Union now represents.

Those 26 faces around the table may well be an accurate preview of the future Europe, but the first question is how the new Europe is to govern itself. Power lies with the heads of the 15 governments, meeting twice a year in sessions like the one just ended at Cannes, under a rotating chairmanship. That is fine for the countries like Britain that want the Union to remain a loose confederation of separate countries. But the expanding membership raises a challenge to those such as Germany and France that are talking about a common foreign policy and a common currency. The 11 candidates at Cannes were the three Baltic states, six other Central and Eastern European countries that used to be under the Soviet thumb and the two Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Malta. Bringing them in would enormously widen the range of social and economic differences within the union.

Another question is how to avoid creating, farther to the east, a belt of the poor, the unstable and the excluded. The European Union is trying hard to avoid isolating Russia. At Cannes the Union deemed the Chechnya disaster to have receded far enough to permit the signing of a trade agreement with the Russians. But there has never been any thought or hint of bringing Russia into the Union, The IS countries of the Union know how to maintain democracy within its borders,

even after expansion. The greater concern is how best to support democracy in the countries that will always be beyond its borders - but not very far beyond them.