Big is beautiful?
Politicians sipped champagne while anti-war protesters were tear-gassed at the Athens EU meeting, writes Gavin Bowd
So 15 will become 25 -- 10 mainly former Communist states have been accepted into the European Union (EU). The population will increase by 25 per cent, although economic output by a mere four per cent. Champagne was sipped in the shadow of the Parthenon, as thoughts turned to designing the constitutional architecture of a federal European state.
It was time, it seemed, for reconciliation. There were "warm and amicable" exchanges between Tony Blair and the erstwhile leaders of the "peace camp", Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac, with the latter making a heavily ambiguous statement to the effect that, "Barbarians have passed through the cradle of the history of human civilisation..."
But principled opposition to the preemptive war to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction was replaced by resolution to deal "pragmatically" with the aftermath of the conflict. The forces located between the Tigris and the Euphrates would be known henceforth as "the coalition" and not "the occupying forces". The United Nations, read the summit's declaration, would play a mere central role and not "the" central role in the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq.
Down in Syntagma Square, where, nearly 60 years before British troops had fired on nationalist demonstrators, descendants of these demonstrators were involved in clashes with police. The presence of Tony Blair had incensed many, and the violence that ensued is a reminder of the strength of anti-war opinion in Greece and elsewhere. The events also questioned the United States' participation in the next Olympic Games.
Another chink in the facade was the absence of Tony Blair from the leaders' photo opportunity. "Teflon Tony", who has accumulated vast amounts of air- miles in recent months, had returned to Great Britain -- where his popularity has recovered spectacularly on the back of "victory" -- to relate to the press his political "near-death" experience, while remaining silent on revelations of collusion between the British State and Loyalist terrorism in Northern Ireland.
Blair's precipitous departure only served to reinforce his fundamental isolation within the current EU: Spain's Aznar and Italy's Berlusconi may have supported the coalition, but public opinion in their respective countries was decidedly opposed to the conflict. During those days of war, it was difficult to ignore balconies draped with banners declaring "Pace" or "No a la guerra".
Blair's New Labour remains wedded to its special and traumatic relationship with the neo-conservative regime in Washington. The party remains divided, many activists are refusing to campaign for the forthcoming council elections, while contradictory noises emerge from 10 and 11 Downing Street about the possibility of a referendum on adopting the European currency.
In such confusion, the Blairite "bridge" across the Atlantic risks falling into the great pond, as prominent dissident Robin Cook pointed out. Of course, in the conflict, Blair and Bush had friends in "new Europe", although no Polish commandos, Bulgarian tanks or Estonian gunships could be found in the storming of Umm Qasr and Nasseriya. The entry of the 10 new states could be seen as the positive outcome of the EU summit, a new stage in the creation of a peaceful and prosperous continent.
But enlargement can bring entanglement. Familiar spectres haunt the imagination of the inhabitants of the safe EU home: an Eastern "invasion" of Western labour markets, transfer of jobs and subsidies to the cheaper East. Will Glasgow die for Gdansk?
On the other hand, the former Communist states will have followed a painful process of transition only to be flooded by dumped western agricultural products, obliged to conform to stringent environmental regulations, and be part of an economy that is bigger but currently far more sluggish (eastern growth rates are several times higher than those in the Eurozone).
Such fissures and fault-lines are nothing new. Pious humbug about post- Communist reunification implies a pre- 45 liberal capitalist golden age whose beneficiaries could be found everywhere between Lisbon and Latvia. This pulls a blue veil over many unsavoury episodes in the recent past: the Fascist dictatorships of central and southern Europe, the disastrous military adventures of some candidate countries (notably Hungary and Slovakia). While the limits of Europe are never clear: the absence of Turkey from the Athens summit shows the instability of its south-eastern marches.
Europe has never been united politically, except under Charlemagne and Hitler, periods of, in the first instance, cultural decline, and in the second, a plunge into barbarism. Europe is united more as a vortex, where national and international, liberty and equality, "widening" and "deepening", contend.
A regional manifestation, in fact, of a global geopolitical meteorology. The whiff of champagne and tear gas may dissipate in the Athenian smog, but some realities cannot be wished away.
