A voice from Mikkeli well worth hearing
The Foreign Minister of Sweden analyses a new book by Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner for Enlargement
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By Carl Bildt
When the French and Dutch voted, rather decisively, against the constitutional treaty of the European Union, a big crisis that nobody could avoid was a fact.
It would have been less significant if countries such as Denmark or Ireland had caused a few problems. And there had been expectations here and there that the new member states of Central Europe would have objected.
But France? And The Netherlands? They were founding members from 1958 - countries that have traditionally yearned for greater speed into more or less federally oriented leaps into the future.
Nor did it help much that various factors of domestic politics could be said to have had a greater influence than the actual question put to the voters in the referendums. The people of the two countries had said no.
The undeniable conclusion of this obvious debacle was that leading politicians had used far too little time and effort to explain what the European process actually involves.
Europe had a central position in the message put forward by the political leaders of the previous generation, but suddenly the European lines of questioning appeared to have disappeared from political debates.
Nor have the sins been limited to these two countries. This year’s elections in Sweden unfortunately followed the model of silence concerning European politics. This model had become more obvious than before, and it leads to the kinds of setbacks that emerged in these two referendums.
I do not have a completely satisfactory explanation for why this has happened. The significance of European politics in the development of our countries has not diminished - everyone knows that quite the opposite is true. The everyday work of prime ministers, or ministers of foreign affairs of countries such as Finland and Sweden focuses very much on European statements.
Against this background it is good that Olli Rehn has sat in Mikkeli, the city of his birth, writing his thoughts about the challenges facing European cooperation. The small book Europe’s Next Frontiers already exists in English, and will soon also appear in Finnish.
The aims of Olli Rehn are typified by something that might be called Nordic pragmatism. Anyone looking for more high-flowing European rhetoric in the book will be disappointed, and the concept of "democratic functionalism" launched by Rehn might not become a mantra for everyone, but the pragmatic visions that give colour to the book feel natural for most people in our part of Europe.
He reaches out into a broad area, but this is not unnatural, considering that the text focuses on questions that are part of his work in the European Commission. Thoughts about the enlargement process of the EU and the future of that process are the core of the book.
Far too rarely is it made clear what a success story the enlargement round of the EU, which is concluding in the membership of Bulgaria and Romania, has been. Peace, stability, democracy, and possibilities for economic development are secured for about 100 million people in ten nations from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea.
The fact that Europe has never been more peaceful, free, and secure, is due to a significant extent to this process. If it had failed, one could not rule out that we might have instead a zone of crises, instability, and conflicts going through Europe.
And it is far too infrequently that we can see the economic significance of enlargement. A rapid visit to Tallinn assures us what significance it has had for the countries themselves, but I believe that we underestimate the importance of the new member countries for the new global competitiveness that we can see now in many parts of European industry.
We must not forget that Europe is a greater exporting power than the United States and Japan combined in the rapidly-growing global market.
When viewed against this kind of success, it seems odd to question the planned enlargement. At the same time it is a fact that the challenges that face us are partly different, when 100 million people from the southwest of Europe, the Balkans, and Turkey are involved.
Olli Rehn puts great emphasis on the importance of this process. Nor should it be too difficult to assure people of the moral responsibility that we have toward the peoples of the West Balkans, who have been so powerfully affected by war and division. A European peace project that would close its doors on them would lose its moral power.
Things could be somewhat different with Turkey. This is not just a country which is in the middle of a process of Europeanisation that is as sweeping as it is complicated; it is also a country that can, within the period of one generation, have a population that is as large as Russia’s, and whose economy is growing faster than that of Russia.
Istanbul would replace London as the largest city in the EU, and Turkey would replace Germany as the largest member state of the Union.
Like Rehn, I am one of those who are fully convinced that this is one of Europe’s long-term strategic, economic, and cultural interests - without underestimating the mutual challenges that the process toward membership entails.
If I had any counter-argument against his reasoning, it would be that Rehn may be a bit too accepting of the somewhat strange debate that has gone on this year about the so-called absorption capacity.
In my view this concept should be purged from the debate as quickly as possible. Who wants to become absorbed? Does Finland see its role in the EU to be that of being absorbed? Is there anyone who would dare stand beneath the Arc de Triomphe proclaiming that this proud nation should be absorbed by the EU?
Looking back it is apparent that there has been some resistance to every enlargement, but each enlargement has left the Union stronger both in Europe and in the world.
There were about 80 members in the European Parliament who either voted against, or abstained when Sweden’s membership was put to the vote. We can recognise their arguments from the present debate. Deepening of the EU would stop, and everything would function worse than before.
One claim that was not made was that we would have been Muslims, but it was said that we are neutral, and I do not know if the one was considered better or worse than the other. A smaller Europe was seen - most remarkably - as a better Europe.
And now a turbocharged version of these arguments is back in European debate. Then we will be in much greater need of voices like that of Rehn, and books like the one that he has written.
One of the most useful aspects of the book is the fact that Rehn’s point of view is very rarely that of Brussels.
He compares the so-called Islamic Calvinism of Turkey’s Kayseri region with the diligence and enterprise in the Laestadian areas surrounding Oulu. And now and then both his old football teams, as well as his time as a conscript on Finland’s eastern border flash by.
I get the feeling that Olli Rehn will slip off to the sauna in the basement of the massive Commission building in Brussels from time to time in order to preserve his most original points of view.
The voice of Mikkeli - or that of the Brussels sauna - is certainly a voice worth hearing.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 8.11.2006
The writer is the Foreign Minister of Sweden. He served as Prime Minister in 1991-1994. The article is based on a Finnish-language translation of the Swedish original.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 14.11.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 A voice from Mikkeli well worth hearing
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