Eastward expansion: The changing face of Europe

Ten countries joined the European Union May 1, increasing its membership to 25 countries. The EU is now one of the world's largest regional markets in population terms. The new EU member states are Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.\nBeate Sissenich, an IU professor of comparative politics who studies the European Union and its eastward enlargement, said she is optimistic about the economic implications of the expansion.\n"The entry of new countries, with growth rates far higher than in the older member states, will benefit old member states by opening up new markets," Sissenich said.\nJunior Michael Groeber a native of Stuttgart, Germany who is majoring in finance and international studies, said he believes the older members will benefit in the long run because of the larger market. \nBut Benjamin Skerra, a German student majoring in finance and accounting, is not so confident of the ability of the new member states to function as part of a cohesive market, at least in the short term. \n"People do not have sufficient purchasing power in these countries right now, but it might change," Skerra said.\nGroeber said the prospect of providing subsidies to the new member states will burden the economies of the older members.\n"There will be subsidies to the new members in the short run and countries like Spain are afraid that their subsidies will go," Groeber said.\nBesides subsidy payments, older member states, especially Germany, also will have to loosen up their labor regulations.\n"The enlargement will also raise competitive pressures for modernization and reform of labor markets in Germany," Sissenich said.\nSkerra said he thinks an effort will have to be made to make labor regulations similar for all states even though upgrades may be costly for the new members.\nHowever, the high standards of environmental regulation pioneered by the old members seems poised to suffer.\n"Many standards will help these countries modernize in the long run, but in the short run, one may well ask whether these are the best priorities for cash-strapped economies to focus on," Sissenich said. "Besides the cost, there is also the issue that many environmental standards are not tailored for the particular needs of post-socialist economies." \nSkerra said he hopes that environmental regulation standards will not be lowered to accommodate the new members and that they will receive some incentives to measure up to the higher standards of the old member states.\nWith few travel restrictions between EU member states, there are concerns about increased migration to the older members, which tend to have better economies than the newer members. Both Sissenich and Bielasiak said they believe the concern is exaggerated and blown out of proportion. Sissenich claims that the potential for massive migration influx is very low.\n"The labor mobility is extremely low within the new member states. If people are unwilling to move to where the jobs are within their own country, they are even less likely to move outside of their country," Sissenich said. "Also, many of the older member states haven't exactly been generating a lot of new jobs, hence, they aren't particularly attractive as destinations for migration." \nSissenich said she believes that previous experience demonstrates her claims.\n"After the European community's southern enlargements in the 1980s, some Spaniards and Portuguese did move north, but not nearly as many as had been expected," she said.\nJacob Bielasiak, a professor of comparative politics, said that if migration occurs, it will be temporary.\n"People might pursue economic opportunities for brief periods before reinvesting efforts at home." he said. \nSkerra feels that language and psychological barriers, besides legislation, will slow down migration and that migrants will primarily be those who can provide technical expertise rather than low-skilled workers. \nThe enlargement also provides an opportunity for cultural integration. Bielasiak said the eastward expansion of the EU is a move toward social reconciliation of the old Eastern Europe and Western Europe after the Cold War, even though tensions continue to exist between them.\nSkerra, however, believes that the enlargement will not lead to any integration in terms of culture. \n"A citizen from a European country tends to see himself or herself as a German or an Italian rather than a European, and I think it is going to remain that way," he said.\nThe enlargement also presents the region with the potential for greater leverage in international politics even though EU members have several unresolved disputes among themselves. \n"Theoretically a strong EU could serve as a counterbalancing great power to the U.S., but it will probably be a long while before the EU is together enough for this to happen," said Janis Cakars, former president of the Baltic and Finnish Student Association at IU.\nSissenich said the EU enlargement could currently benefit the United States.\n"Extending Europe's zone of stability and democracy is very much in the interest of the U.S.," she said.\n-- Contact staff writer Sheeba Madan at smadan@indiana.edu .