Címkék
The Dutch-Finnish veto to the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen Area is the greatest failure so far of the European Union. This, because it shook both major principles of the union’s architecture: the rule of law and the ever-continuing process of integration.
The governments of the Netherlands and Finland gave in to domestic pressure (with German and French connivance) and vetoed the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen area. Comments made by Jerzy Miller, minister of the interior of Poland, regarding the failed vote included talk of broken promises and the lack of trust between the member states. His words may well be of historic value in a few years’ time because it might take at least that long before the Scehngen accession of the Romania and Bulgaria (the states now condemned to the wear the dunce’s hat), may once again be put on the official agenda.
The stated reason of the veto was the allegedly slow pace of reforms in the Romanian and Bulgarian justice system as well as the high rate of corruption. But these are just transparent pretexts... If the Dutch and Finnish parties honestly had objections regarding corruption and slow reforms, they could have asked for the application of the safeguards specific to the Mechanism of Cooperation and Verification to which Romania and Bulgaria are subject, and which would have led to the suspension of certain EU rights for these countries. This, however, would have required procedures according to EU law as well as the identification of genuine shortcomings and real debate. In matters of Schengen accession the fight against corruption wasn’t even a criteria and the forced linkage between the two issues was only brought into the debate due to pressure from the French-German axis, in this spring’s discussions. The Dutch and the Finns in fact used this occasion to strike Romania and Bulgaria where it hurt the most and the fastest by vetoing the Scehngen accession. By doing so, they wiped their feet into the general principle of legality of punishment, because the conduct of the punished states had no legal link whatsoever with the penalty applied to them, especially since in April of this year it was already declared that Romania and Bulgaria fully satisfy the technical (i.e. the only) criteria for Schengen accession.
The real problem of the Dutch and Finns is in fact obvious: they’re not made of wood so from time to time they too display a “healthy” amount of xenophobia when they sight people of another color, language or culture. For example let me not comment on the Party of Real Finns which recently rose to power in Finland… It’s interesting to note here, that most illegal immigrants do not cross the border to the EU from the direction of Romania or Bulgaria, but from Greece (upwards of 80% of the total number), which has been a member of the Shengen Area for a very long time. Data for this year now place these numbers at around 90% of the total.
To add insult to injury the two vetoing “small powers” also gave a good boot to the other main principle of the EU according to which integration must be constant. Due to this, the (legally unjustified) postponement of Romanian and Bulgarian accession to a time that is as yet to be determined may well lead to a domino-effect of disintegration. Romania has already put some economic countermeasures in place such as the systematic controls imposed on Dutch flower and seed shipments or mentioning Dutch-Romanian enterprises as hotbeds of as tax evasion.
It wouldn’t be so hard to imagine a scenario in which Romania and Bulgaria (both with religious Eastern-Orthodox majority) would veto the impending EU accession of (a majority Catholic) Croatia so as to allow Serbia to catch up to its neighbor in the Balkans during the accession process. (This step should already have been taken during the spring when the first unjustified attacks on Romanian and Bulgarian Schengen accession were made).
Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t any corruption in Romania (there is, and it takes up some forms which aren’t even known elsewhere) but the solution to this problem is not wholesale humiliation of the entire country because this only empowers the corrupt and the populists (the two categories often overlap).
As for the lie which the West would call “the fight against corruption” in which success is measured in the number of condemned politicians, I rather not say anything for fear of uttering a comprehensive set of expletives to circumscribe this kind of attitude… Let’s just say that you can’t fight corruption with Stalinist head-quotas.
P.S. This post is a loose translation of my previous one entitled “Szélmalomharc” and which appeared in Hungarian, on the 22nd of September 2011.
