It is one of the EU's most cherished ambitions to play
a bigger and more coherent role on the world stage. But taking in 10 new members to create a club of 25 countries is likely -- in the short term at least -- to make achieving that more difficult.
Not that the EU aspires to compete militarily with an unassailably powerful US. Defense budgets are shrinking and few countries are prepared to pool much sovereignty in this sensitive area.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Yet if 450 million Europeans living in the world's largest single market -- many already sharing the same currency -- want to be able to punch at their weight, something is going to have to change.
Europeans may then no longer be derided as playing "wimps" to American "warriors" and develop some clout in the Middle East, North Korea and beyond.
The chances do not look
good. One Brussels ambassador warned: "On the big foreign policy issues, there is a real risk that after enlargement it will be harder rather than easier to forge consensus."
`disaggregation'
This has been clear since last year, when quips about "old Europe" and "new Europe" made by the hawkish US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reflected deep divisions over Iraq.
Britain, Spain and Italy lined
up with Washington, but so did Poland and, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, most of the other new member states, while France and Germany led the anti-war camp.
The newcomers then quickly discovered the cost when French President Jacques Chirac, who is the EU leader most unhappy with enlargement, rebuked them for behaving in an "infantile" and "reckless" way.
Washington had already tried "disaggregation" -- cherry-picking individual European countries on specific issues -- to secure immunity from prosecution for its personnel under the rules of the international criminal court.
Washington has two distinct attitudes towards Europe.
It takes it seriously over trade and economics, but treats it as
a political dwarf while reacting
anxiously to the assertion of its interests, for example over the Galileo satellite system or an EU military headquarters.
But the key fact about May Day's expansion is that the newcomers are all members of NATO, the institutional embodiment of the transatlantic link, as are Bulgaria and Romania, which hope to join in 2007.
That means they look to the Atlantic alliance for security and that their limited resources will be devoted to it, not, as Paris and Berlin would like, to the EU's fledgling defense policies.
Another difficulty for a union that embraces former Soviet satellites and members of the Warsaw pact will be forging a common strategy towards Russia, which is deeply unsettled by this enlargement.
"It's the one issue where the easterners expect to be heard," a senior diplomat said. "They are hawkish, and say that you mustn't blink first or take any bullshit from Moscow."
Eastern Europeans care about their own backyard and will prefer election-monitoring or peacekeeping in Belarus or Moldova to missions in former French or British colonies in Africa.
Poland is likely to contribute to EU-For, taking over from NATO in Bosnia. The Balkans are the one area where the union can use the carrots of trade, aid and eventual membership to encourage political and economic change. Hungary and Slovenia are already active on Balkan issues.
Narrowing gap
But in the longer term, experts predict, the eastern Europeans will not remain wedded to the US.
Poland is already bristling at the fact that its citizens, unlike those of most current member states, require a visa to visit
the US. It is also unhappy with
its involvement in Iraq. So is Slovakia.
Over time, exposed to the EU's permanent process of bargaining and trade-offs -- a foreign policy shift in exchange for a budget deal -- the gap between old members and new members is likely to narrow.
"The main message from the new members is that they are not
a unified group and will want to avoid choosing between the US and the EU," European analyst Catriona Gourlay said.
Polling shows that the new Europeans share the views of older ones about issues including the death penalty, global warming and nuclear proliferation -- all subjects of bitter transatlantic disagreement.
And small countries will want to strengthen the EU's global role: what influence can there be for Malta or Estonia if not through the union?
Javier Solana, the EU's Spanish foreign policy chief, already has his work cut out maneuvering around big governments, encouraging and cajoling the union to get its collective act together.
But it will take some time before a Europe of 25 or more members is indeed -- as Solana bravely insists it already is -- "more than the sum of its parts."
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