IV. Suggested activities for students:

1. Study the economic and political situation in Norway and Switzerland now. Did any new reasons appear for them to join the EU now? What are they? Give arguments to support your viewpoint.

2. What do you know about EFTA? What are its mail goals and objectives? Prepare a brief report about it.

3. What are the relations between the EU and Russia? Should the latter seek to join the EU? Why? Would Russia benefit from this alliance? Would Europe benefit from it? Can you prove you point of view?

4. Take any would-be member state of the EU. Research the situation in this country and prepare a report. What obstacles does it face on its way to joining the union? Is it easy to meet the demands of the EU? Is fulfillment of these conditions necessary to save the EU from collapse or are these demands just a tool to keep unwanted members external to the EU?

5. People’s attitude to the EU’s enlargement is varying. Once Mr.Santer spoke about “ins” and “pre-ins” and expressed a hope about all the European countries being member-states of the EU. But nowadays voices against further enlargement are heard more and more often. What can account for such a change of heart? What do average citizens and distinguished pundits fear? Does the EU need new members? What new members will mean for the EU: new advantages or new challenges?

Text 2 Europe, Russia and in-between Russia's “near abroad” is becoming Europe's neighbourhood

North of the Caspian Sea, Europe seems a world away. The steppe stretches into Asia. A statue of Genghis Khan stands in the region's main town, Uralsk. The Lesser Horde (an administrative division of the Mongol empire) was proclaimed here.

Yet near this statue stands a house where Russia's great poet, Alexander Pushkin, stayed. And through the vast landscape runs the Zhaiyk river, which meanders down from the Urals, Europe's traditional eastern boundary. As you cross westward, the sign on the bridge says simply “Europe”; as you return, “Asia”.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, says that, if his country ever applied to join the European Union, it would have a better claim than Turkey. That is because more of its territory lies west of the river Zhaiyk than there is Turkish land west of the Bosporus.

The margins of Europe lend themselves to games about where the continent ends, but they are more than a curiosity. Dealing with Russia and reducing European dependence on its oil and gas has become one of the main preoccupations of the EU. Relations with the Kremlin have become trickier of late. Last week's Russia-EU summit in Finland turned ugly, with Vladimir Putin saying Russia was no more corrupt than Spain, and pointing out that “mafia” is an Italian word, not a Russian one.

It is sometimes thought that Europeans can do little to rein in a petrodollar-fuelled Russia, beyond issuing the occasional mild rebuke. But the EU is not without clout. It may not be able to influence the Russian government's behaviour inside the country, but it can try to limit the consequences outside. It can do this by changing the way it treats the countries sandwiched between itself and Russia—the former Soviet republics that Russia calls its “near abroad” and which the EU calls its “neighbourhood”.

The EU has never really had a policy towards its neighbours, except enlargement. So when new members from central Europe joined the club in 2004, Europeans faced an unfamiliar problem: for the first time, they were jostling up against countries that they could not necessarily influence with the inducements of membership, either because they were too big or too un-European. Moreover, these new neighbours were not a relatively coherent group like the ex-communist states of central Europe; they formed an arc of instability from Belarus in the north-east, round the Caucasus and along North Africa to Morocco.

To deal with this motley bunch, the EU invented a European neighbourhood policy (ENP). The overall aim was to encourage stability and liberal reform. But this was an umbrella term covering two entirely different groups: countries to the south which would never join the EU and where the main European concerns were immigration and Islamic radicalism; and those to the east, where people thought of themselves as European, wanted policy advice as much as money and believed that they stood a chance of getting into the EU one day. This policy was incoherent, of course. But that did not matter—until recently.

New political forces are at work. One is the emergence of a more assertive, even aggressive, Russia. Now the EU needs to stabilise its eastern neighbours not only for their own sake, but to fend off Russia and diversify away from its energy. The other factor is enlargement fatigue within the union and the public reaction against the prospect of even more countries joining the 25-member club (soon to be 27²⁴). This means that countries such as Ukraine no longer believe vague EU hints about eventual membership; they want something more substantial.

Germany is trying to get the EU to offer just that. It wants to change and expand Europe's engagement with the neighbours, by extending bits of the single market eastwards: to Ukraine, to bind it closer to the EU; and even farther east to Kazakhstan, which has one of the ten largest oilfields in the world. The EU's foreign-affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, is drafting a co-operation agreement with Kazakhstan, in effect claiming Central Asia's largest and most successful country as part of Europe's neighbourhood.

One should not expect too much from all this. It is true that Kazakhstan is potentially an alternative energy provider—but in ten years' time it will probably still be only a potential source. The country is landlocked. Almost all exports go through Russia. A pipeline across the Caspian (skirting Russia) has been mooted but is years from being built. Asked about the EU's role in Central Asia, a former foreign minister from Kyrgyzstan said dismissively: “The EU? We don't know anything about the EU here.”

The Ukrainians consider themselves part of Europe, not its fringe. They see even glorified neighbourhood status as a glass half-empty. Yet Russia could react neurotically to EU meddling in what it sees as its backyard. As it has shown repeatedly, the Kremlin is perfectly prepared to use energy prices, and the threat to cut off supplies, as a means of putting political pressure on other countries. It is now trying to slow down Ukraine's membership of the World Trade Organisation.

Hug them close

Does that mean that greater EU engagement with its neighbours amounts to a policy of high risk and low reward? Countries on Russia's rim have as much reason to welcome European influence as the Europeans have to seek a role. For almost all of them, the EU is their largest trading partner and they want to reduce dependence on Russia (much more onerous for them than dependence on Russian gas is for the EU). And all, with the possible exception of Georgia, see closer ties with the EU as a way of diversifying risks rather than antagonising Russia.

This is one of those occasions when the EU can be more influential than its constituent parts. Germany, France or Britain can do comparatively little to contain Russian meddling. An EU of 25 and still growing can remind Russia that its “near abroad” is also Europe's neighbourhood.

Comprehension