EU Enlargement: A Union of Values or a Union of Interests?

With EU enlargement seemingly around the corner, many soon-to-be EU citizens hope that a brighter future lies just ahead. Not least among these are members of vulnerable minority groups such as the Roma, who have drawn encouragement from the EU’s insistence that candidate states must demonstrate respect for and protection of minorities to join the Union. But what can Roma and other minority groups reasonably expect from EU membership?

Roma, by all accounts, suffer from severe disadvantages throughout Central and Eastern Europe; the EU has led the way in cataloguing the many ways in which Roma are discriminated against in candidate states, and in which their Governments have failed to protect them. Some member states have even granted asylum to Roma refugees from Central and Eastern European countries – a clear admission that the problems they face in those countries are serious indeed.

With the EU providing encouragement and financial support, candidate State Governments have made visible efforts to develop comprehensive policies to ensure that minorities are both protected against discrimination and enjoy the right to preserve and cultivate their unique identities. However, new reports by the EU Accession Monitoring Program (EUMAP) of the Open Society Institute reveal that, unfortunately, these policies are frequently more visible than effective. All too often, they have foundered due to insufficient political backing, low levels of public support, and even lower levels of funding. And Roma have looked to the EU to keep the pressure on.

As long as the accession process has lasted, this strategy has proven effective. The EU has repeatedly encouraged candidate states to improve policy implementation, and has backed its recommendations with funding and expertise. However, as the date of enlargement approaches, some have begun to ask how the pressure can be maintained once candidates become full members.

The answer is disquieting. First, the situation of Roma in many EU member states is dishearteningly similar to their situation in candidate states. EUMAP reports on the situation of Roma in Germany and Spain have revealed that even in these comparatively wealthy countries Roma live in extremely poor conditions, attend segregated schools, face discrimination in employment, and have difficulties accessing even basic goods and services.

Moreover, the reports also show that “new” minority groups, such as Muslims – many of whom have been living in member states such as France and the United Kingdom for generations – are often rendered invisible by policies and legislation which screen for and guard against disadvantage on the basis of race or ethnicity, but not religious belief.

Unlike candidate states, however, member states’ records in the area of minority protection have not been subjected to intense scrutiny from EU bodies for the past decade. There has been no pressure on them to prove their democratic credentials. As a result, few have developed effective policies to address the concerns of particularly vulnerable minorities such as Roma or Muslims. Few have achieved full compliance with EU anti-discrimination directives. The Copenhagen political criteria do not apply to member states, and minority rights are not covered under existing EU law, and are not part of the acquis communautaire. Thus, there is no mechanism in place to review member states’ efforts to comply with human rights commitments thoroughly and systematically.

And there is no apparent intention to remedy these deficiencies. Although EU member states have joined forces to hold countries outside the Union – including candidate states – to the highest standards of human rights, and have not hesitated to offer criticism, advice, and recommendations in these areas, they have been less enthusiastic when it comes to critical appraisal of their own performance. For example, the Spanish government recently referred to critiques of racially-motivated violence against immigrant children in Spain by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as “unfocused” and “inaccurate;” and to the observations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s as “calumnious”, “false and manipulated,” and containing “groundless allegations.” The German government recently dismissed critique of its record on fighting racism by a prominent European human rights monitoring body as “much too sweeping.”

For years, international experts have been recommending that the EU should institute more effective mechanisms for articulating, coordinating and overseeing adherence to an internal human rights policy. These recommendations have so far fallen on deaf ears; EU human rights policy is still focused primarily outwards.

And when the European Commission and Council recently unveiled their plans to issue invitations to ten prospective members, there was an announcement that some monitoring would continue, with a focus on candidate states’ ability to implement the acquis. There was no mention of the political criteria. Roma and others wonder – is enlargement really about expanding the community of democratic values? Or is it about something else?

The EU still has time, before the European Council in Copenhagen in December, to answer this question; to make it clear that it still subscribes to the common democratic values it held up like a promise before candidate states when they set out on the path to enlargement. At that time, the EU set its standards high. The moment has come for it to live up to them by applying them equally, across the new Union.

Rachel Guglielmo is director of the EU Accession Monitoring Program (EUMAP) of the Open Society Institute. EUMAP has published a series of reports assessing the impact of the EU accession process on the development of human rights and rule of law policies. Reports are available at: http://www.eumap.org/reports