Nicolas Sarkozy really needs to get a grip when it comes to the European Union. What an insightful and populist policy to come out with in launching his presidential campaign: ‘I want to say that Europe must give itself borders, that not all countries have a vocation to become members of Europe, beginning with Turkey which has no place inside the European Union’. Yet on Sarkozy's grounds neither has France.
For a start, Europe is not the European Union. Europe is a geographically entity that has existed for centuries. The European Union is a political project of some fifty years. Is Switzerland not in Europe, or a ‘member’ of Europe? What about Norway? To say a country can become a ‘member’ of Europe is just ridiculous.
But that gripe aside, M. Sarkozy’s rationale for not accepting Turkey is just hypocritical: ‘Enlarging Europe with no limit risks destroying European political union, and that I do not accept’.
I want to make two points here. One, if Sarko is really worried about destroying European political union he should take a long look at his own country’s policies and forget about Turkey for a minute. I’m thinking of the French ‘national champions’ and the insistence on ‘defending France and all things French’ (Jacques Chirac) at a time of a crisis. Or how about the idea recently supported by Sarko that there should be increased political control of the ECB and the euro to set an interest rate more appropriate to France. The ‘big’ G6 EU member states, led by Germany and France, are also tending to rip political union by their insistence on ‘informal chats’ to reach EU deals in sensitive policy areas such as immigration and border controls. If you want political union, you can’t have it without a bit of give-and-take between all member states – and that includes nos amis en France.
But anyway, wouldn’t it be great if Sarko was right and admitting Turkey did cause the current political union to collapse? If admitting Turkey caused a shift to intergovernmentalism and something of a multi-speed EU where countries could actually have some democracy and opt out of laws they don’t like, then get them in now I say. Moreover, it is no coincidence that the countries in the EU most in favour of this change, such as the UK, are those who have been most active in supporting Turkish membership. An intergovernmental model could accommodate Turkey, the supranational model probably couldn’t. Yet change doesn’t seem likely and, with this, Turkey will more than likely become increasingly alienated and out of the EU loop: a serious geo-political mistake in my view.