The European Union’s decision earlier this week to set a conditional January 2007 entry date for Bulgaria and Romania spotlights key political dilemmas facing the bloc as it continues to expand eastwards into former communist countries.

The EU’s expansion drive is based on the over-arching political decision to bring peace, stability and prosperity to its immediate neighbourhood.

But unlike the 2004 ‘big bang’ enlargement to bring in 10 mainly eastern and central European countries, the new wave of EU expansion is being conducted amid concerns that most of the countries waiting in the wings are poorer and more volatile than their western counterparts.

As a result, policymakers in Brussels face the daunting task of trying to balance their commitment to further EU enlargement with efforts to allay public concerns that the bloc is opening its doors too quickly to poorer and relatively unstable countries in the western Balkans.

It looks like a no win situation. If they move too fast to open their doors to new members, EU officials will be lambasted for ignoring public opinion.

However, if they slam down the brakes on expansion, policymakers in Brussels risk endangering the reform and modernisation effort being undertaken by nations waiting impatiently for entry into the elite EU club.

For the moment, however, it’s the critics of enlargement that seem to be winning.

Although EU’s top official on enlargement Olli Rehn insisted this week that Bulgaria and Romania were on track to join the EU on January 1, 2007, he also warned this was conditional on further reform efforts by both states.   The EU is taking a similarly tough line in membership negotiations with Croatia and Turkey. While talks with both countries opened earlier this year, progress has been slow as EU governments step up demands for far-reaching changes in the two countries’ administrative, legislative and judicial systems.

Ankara faces additional political complications, with Cyprus insisting again recently that it would stop EU negotiations with Turkey over the long-standing issue of Cypriot ships and airplanes being allowed to visit Turkish harbours and airports.

The EU has made it clear that Turkey’s negotiations to join the EU — expected to take up to 20 years — are conditional on a settlement of the Cypriot question. The EU is also demanding Turkey must recognise Cyprus which joined the EU in May 2004.

Given slow and tortuous progress in the talks with Turkey, some EU parliamentarians are beginning to insist that Brussels should stop dealing with Ankara and Zagreb in the same manner and speed up talks with Croatia.

The focus for the moment, however, is on Bulgaria and Romania, both of which missed the EU’s 2004 expansion and are now hoping to join the bloc in January next year.

Rehn and other EU officials are hoping that their decision to make the 2007 accession date for both countries conditional on further political and economic reform will satisfy people on both sides of the divide.

Sofia and Bucharest, they hope, will start working harder to speed up internal change and restructuring to meet EU demands. Meanwhile, EU expansion nay-sayers will be satisfied that their demands for stricter conditions are being met by policymakers.

Brussels’ difficult balancing act may get even more difficult, however.

Even as Bulgaria and Romania rush to meet EU demands, some hardliners in Europe are insisting that their accession should be put off until 2008. A year-long delay, however, could not only discourage the two countries’ reformist governments but also create a public backlash against the EU which in turn could trigger an anti-Europe fall-out throughout the already volatile Balkans region.   Also, public concerns about expansion show no sign of abating. While the EU’s 2004 enlargement went fairly smoothly, two years later the mood in Europe has changed radically.   The rejection last year of an EU draft treaty by French and Dutch voters has set off a bout of pessimism across the bloc, with many key politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, insisting that the EU must pause for breath before taking more countries into its embrace.

The reasons for the new anti-enlargement mood are mainly economic. Many Europeans continue to fear an influx of low-cost eastern European workers into the EU while labour unions worry that western European companies are relocating to the east in search of cheap labour.   As a result, although EU policymakers insist that all Balkan states have an ‘EU future’, they have been careful not to mention any dates for such accession.  

In fact, EU foreign ministers meeting in Salzburg in March made clear that the bloc’s ‘absorption capacity’ must be taken into account when future expansion decisions are taken by governments.   The problem with Bulgaria and Romania as well as others in the EU ante-chamber is that they do not, at the moment, meet many of the EU’s stringent entry conditions.

Commission reports on the two countries released this week insisted that Bulgaria and Romania must step up efforts to tackle corruption and organised crime and upgrade their weak administrative and judicial systems.

In a reflection of tougher conditions for newcomers, even once Bulgaria and Romania are in, they will be subject to a special monitoring system for the first three years to ensure that efforts to tackle corruption and reform the judiciary are yielding results.

Such close monitoring is unprecedented in the EU since it effectively gives the new entrants second-class membership.

But with the EU now in increasingly inward-looking and introspective mode, Rehn’s tough conditional offer is one that Bulgaria, Romania — and others in the EU waiting line — cannot afford to turn down.