Question about the EU

I was just in Poland. A guide told us that Poland didn’t negotiate the best deal for it to join the EU because TPTB in Poland were all communists and didn’t care. That’s not my question. Is there a negotiation involved with the EU community and countries who want to join so they get a good ‘deal’?

Yeah, there is. The entering countries have to make a whole bunch of changes to conform with EU rules, and promise to make/continue to make reforms in various areas. I’m not an expert, but Bulgaria entered the EU this year, so I’ve gotten to see tons of this stuff coming up. For instance, Bulgaria’s one nuclear power plant was shut down in January because it didn’t conform to EU safety regulations, and it’s still shut down. A lot of the regulations are kind of weird…like, a few months ago there was a news story about how cell phone carriers had to expand their local call areas to conform to EU regulations on roaming.

Right now there’s concern in the EU that Bulgaria and Romania aren’t really following through on all of their promises. And of course, Turkey’s negotiations with the EU aren’t going well because the Turks are getting pissed off at all of the EU’s demands. Column from last week’s Economist on problems with EU expansion.

I’m not sure if any countries really bargained hard with the EU to get a “good deal”, though. Maybe farther west. People out here were really eager to join the EU and pretty much just did what the EU said.

Britain negotiated for many years before joining (and was vetoed by de Gaulle several times) and then Harold Wilson renegotiated its terms once inside (largely as a cosmetic device to keep the antimarketeers quiet) in 1975. Today you have to accept the whole body of EU laws as you find them and there’s not much wiggle room. The perception is “they’ll have to take whatever deal we deign to give them, if they want to join that much”.

Applicants have to sign up to the acquis communautaire to enter. This is non-negotiable.

They generally have to make quite a lot of internal reforms to comply with these standards. What are more likely to be a focus for negotiations are issues such as the number of seats the country will get in the European Parliament or the weight which will attach to its votes in the Council of Ministers.