Presentation by President of the Republic Tarja Halonen at the national library of Estonia in Tallinn on 16.5.2000

(check against delivery) ENGLARGEMENT AND DEEPENING INTEGRATION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The defining features of Finland’s foreign policy in the post-war period have been on the one hand neutrality and later non-participation in military alliances, and on the other an active policy of integration. We have resolutely striven for cooperation with other states that have the same values as us. Our most important step in this respect was accession to the European Union in 1995.

We are an active and constructive member, and we do not feel like newcomers to the European Union. We have had an input into revising the founding treaty, joined the euro area and held the Presidency. We feel that the balance sheet of our membership is clearly positive, for both us and the Union.

There are two central questions that interest both Finland as a member of the EU and Estonia as a country negotiating for membership: How should enlargement of the Union be carried through, and how should the Union be developed?

These themes – enlargement and deepening – have been cropping up for discussion and resolution at regular intervals since the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. The questions have never been easy, and sometimes no answers have been found. Then it has taken years or decades for decisions to be reached.

It took some twenty years for the first round of enlargement to be completed. There were many turning points before Britain, together with Denmark and Ireland, finally joined the European Economic Community in 1973. The choices made by Britain and our Nordic neighbours concerning integration were important from the perspective of Finland. They resulted in a need and an opportunity for first our EFTA arrangements and then our free-trade agreement with the EEC. Through these agreements we safeguarded our key trade-related interests and became a participant in Western European economic integration.

The Community’s second round of enlargement, this time southward, involved different motives and problems from those of the first. One central goal was to consolidate democracy in Greece, Spain and Portugal. A similar stability-related motive has featured centrally in decisions concerning the enlargement process now ongoing. A second new feature in the 1980s round of enlargement was a significant gap between the economic strengths of the old and new member states. This meant that the countries joining then found it difficult to adjust to the Community.

When a third round of enlargement got under way in the early nineties – on the applicant countries’ initiative as always – the setting was again new. The EFTA countries had been offered a sort of third way, i.e. the European Economic Area. It gave these countries access to the single market, but excluded them from other integration and above all from Community decision making. Accordingly, negotiations for membership of the EU began soon after the EEA agreement had been concluded. It took only about a year from then to complete the accession agreement, but we can form a more correct picture of the time the whole process took if we count it as having begun with the launch of the EEA process and ending when Finland, Sweden and Austria acceded to membership. That time was six years long.

The conclusion to be drawn from the three enlargements to date is that the process always takes time. Therefore there is no cause for concern now that accession negotiations have been going on for nearly two years. The main reason why it takes such a long time to get ready for membership is the broad diversity and complexity of the matters that have to be dealt with. Every wave of new members must adopt, all at once, a bigger and bigger volume of EU legislation and accommodate themselves to more and more arrangements. At the moment that Estonia joins, you will have to assume a greater number of obligations than Finland had to five years ago.

The number of obligations is growing because integration is deepening. As with enlargement, deepening has advanced in stages. Sometimes projects do not come to fruition, as happened in 1954 when plans to establish political and defence communities came to nothing. At other times there have been long periods in which no reform projects whatsoever have been initiated. There was one such period of stagnation on the integration front in the seventies.

The pace of integration picked up again in the eighties, when the Community began creating a genuine single market. It maintained its momentum into the early nineties, which brought agreement to implement economic and monetary union, closer political cooperation and the addition, in the form of intergovernmental cooperation, of justice and home affairs to the Union’s responsibilities. Changes in institutions and decision-making procedures have always accompanied these political reforms.

The enlargements that brought in the southern and EFTA countries coincided with important projects to deepen integration. Deepening and enlargement have often gone hand-in-hand. Some projects with the aim of developing integration have been prompted or given added momentum by enlargement. That was the case when, for example, the Community’s structural and regional policies were strengthened. The single market could function effectively only if developmental differences between regions were narrowed, especially in the new southern member states.

Sometimes, too, the linkage has worked the other way round; in other words, deepening integration has drawn new countries to the European Communities. They have become more interesting. That was the situation a decade ago when the EFTA countries wanted access to the single market.

The linkage between the enlargement process now ongoing and the development of the Union has been clear from the very beginning. Although projects in the pipeline include the development of a common foreign and security policy and enhancing the EU’s competitiveness as an information society, the reform project with the closest bearing on enlargement is the one meant to ensure that the Union has an effective decision-making capacity. There is a general consensus that the Treaty of Amsterdam did not achieve the institutional reforms that will be needed when the number of member states nearly doubles. Therefore it was decided to arrange a new intergovernmental conference dedicated to the institutional reforms that enlargement will require.

The three main themes in these deliberations, which began in January and are due to be concluded in December, are: the composition of the Commission, the weighting of votes in the Council, and broadening the scope of majority-vote decisions.

On the basis of our experience to date, we in Finland consider it important that every member state is represented in the Commission. That is necessary to ensure that when the Commission makes its decisions it has first-hand information on circumstances in every member state. Besides that, the fact that a Commissioner from Finland takes part in decision making makes our membership more justified in the eyes of citizens. Set against these facts, the claim that a 27-member Commission would no longer be able to function seems rather frivolous. It is mainly the big member states that have been pressing for a radical downsizing of the Commission. No member – big or small – has been prepared to give up its only Commissioner. There will probably be no major changes and, and in time Estonia will have a representative on the Commission.

The big countries want to increase their relative voting strength in the Council. As they see it, the present distribution does not take the sizes of their populations adequately into account. They believe their position will weaken as the Union expands, because the vast majority of new members are small or medium-sized countries. In practice, however, the borderline when decisions are being made does not run between big and small; instead, coalitions vary depending on other reasons. As things now stand, a possible outcome could be that the big countries giving up their second Commissioner will be compensated by increasing their Council vote weightings somewhat. However, that would be done without upsetting the delicate balance between member states of different sizes.

The only one of the conference’s three main themes that is genuinely linked to the effectiveness of decision making concerns adding to the list of issues where unanimity among all members would no longer be required. No one can deny that unanimity is harder to achieve in a bigger group. Therefore already at the last intergovernmental conference, Finland adopted a positive stance on increasing the use of qualified-majority voting. The Treaty of Amsterdam did not, however, take us very far along this road and making progress at this year’s conference will be anything but easy. In the case of virtually every article, there is bound to be not less than one member dead set against abandoning unanimity, at least in the early stage on the negotiations. Therefore increasing the use of qualified-majority voting can justifiably be seen as the touchstone of the ongoing conference.

In addition to the main themes, discussion in advance of the intergovernmental conference focused on whether the provisions concerning flexible integration should be amended with a view to enlargement. The Treaty of Amsterdam allows for this kind of integration, in which only some members would participate. These provisions have not been exercised yet, but the economic and monetary union and the Schengen cooperation in justice and home affairs are the earliest examples of how flexibility can be applied. A point emphasised in the run up to the ongoing intergovernmental conference is that the option of flexible integration lessens the risk of enlargement impeding progress towards deeper integration. There appears to be a willingness at the conference to consider ways of arriving at decisions concerning the application of flexibility. However, profound changes are unlikely.

All in all from the perspective of the candidate countries, there are no direct risks associated with the intergovernmental conference. It has been agreed that the negotiations on institutional reforms will be concluded before the end of this year. When the reforms have been ratified, the Union will be ready to admit new members. No member state has expressed doubts about this timetable.

Concern that not enough will be done at the conference to ensure an effectively-functioning Union has prompted some persons who have had central roles in the development of integration to advocate radical solutions. There is a fear that enlargement will paralyse a Union that has not been thoroughly reformed. One solution proposed is that all decisions other than those relating to changing key provisions of the founding treaties should be made by qualified majority and together with the European Parliament. Another model put forward is one in which those members willing and able to make quicker progress than the others would form a separate group with its own institutions.

Proposals like these can be seen more as gambits than as issues to be raised at the negotiating table. The governments of the member states assessed the situation when they were deciding on the agenda for the conference and none of them has expressed support for such profound changes. The next enlargement will be very challenging, but it will not be such a major turning point as to require a radical restructuring of the Union’s foundations. The fact that we have chosen this line also means that enlargement will not depend on the Union’s internal reforms. On the other hand, the more radical ideas that I have mentioned show that a need to discuss the future of integration is felt in various quarters. We ourselves prompted a discussion of this kind at an informal meeting of foreign ministers in Saariselkä last September.

When the European Council decided in Copenhagen in summer 1993 that those Central and Eastern European countries that wanted to could become members of the Union, the conditions that they would have to meet were clearly spelled out. The Union has repeatedly reaffirmed that it will continue to apply these political, economic and other criteria for membership. The reason is quite simple. For example, where the single market is concerned, the Union is like a chain that is only as strong as its weakest link. No one wants to jeopardise what integration has achieved by pressing on too hastily with enlargement. It would not be acceptable to the citizens of the existing member states, and it would not ultimately be in the interests of the applicants, either.

With the Union insisting that new members will not only have to adopt Union legislation, but also implement it in practice, some of the applicants have expressed doubts as to whether the Union wants progress in the negotiations at all. It has even been said that it has lost interest in enlargement. Such claims are groundless. The negotiations have proceeded at the speed that the applicants’ own preparedness has permitted. The decisions taken in Helsinki last December in relation to the intergovernmental conference, explication of negotiation procedures, commencing negotiations with new applicants and Turkey’s status as a candidate demonstrate that the Union has not abandoned its goal of enlargement.

Even if it is only done for reasons of negotiation tactics, claiming that the Union is reluctant to enlarge can not but hamper progress in the accession process. In general, it is better to concentrate on pressing on with preparations for membership and negotiations rather than indulging in speculation about who will join and when. Least of all should we promise applicants the privilege of being in the first wave of accession.

It has given us in Finland great satisfaction to note the seriousness with which Estonia takes the need to harmonise national legislation with EU norms and develop the administrative structures that this calls for. You have worked resolutely with regard to the political and economic criteria as well. Moreover, Estonia has been businesslike and effective in the negotiations themselves. I was able to see that for myself when I presided over the negotiations in my capacity as Chair of the Council last autumn. You have been concentrating on the essential issues.

After the EU’s own readiness, the applicant’s eligibility and the successful conclusion of negotiations, there is still one important stage to be gone through before accession. Efforts to gain membership of the Union must have the support of citizens. We were given a reminder of the importance of this aspect during the last round of enlargement. Although negotiations were concluded successfully with four candidates, only three joined. Norway withdrew – for the second time – her membership application after the people had rejected the idea in a referendum.

Throughout our own accession process, we in Finland tried to ensure that citizens had all the information they wanted about the EU and the effects that our membership was expected to have. It was left to non-governmental organisations to present views, and those expressed included critical ones. The Government did not try to propagate any kind of "Europe ideology". That would hardly have aroused much enthusiasm in people; indeed, it would probably have had the opposite effect. In general, we were careful to avoid creating false expectations with regard to the benefits of membership. Naturally, the citizens of every country have their own reasons – based on their historical experiences, economic situation and other factors – to be in favour of or against membership. Nevertheless I believe that our realistic information policy during the accession process is one reason why support for membership has remained relatively stable also after the referendum.

We are satisfied with our membership of the European Union, which we are now making every effort to develop. We are conducting accession negotiations in a way that will open the door to membership also for Estonia. In this work, however, it is Estonia herself that has the most important role to play.