European Union Membership , close examination of Geopolitical, Economical and Cultural Criterias.

The European Union, as the name states is an economic and geopolitical Union with total population of 446 million and holds 27 European countries sharing over 4M km in surface area (EU, 2021), the union operates through a conferral, supranational & intergovernmental systems where political decision making process is taken by a delegating authority to an acting institution supervised by member country that acts within its permitted activities declared in mutually signed treaties (Teodor.L.M, 2009) . The structure of such system is heavily influenced by the fundamental beliefs of the union members in freedom and democracy. Therefore, the citizens of member states sets the political foundation where they directly participate in elections every 5 years to choose different executives and representatives in the European bodies such as European Parliament, European court of justice & European Central Bank (French Government, 2018) the following organigram illustrates the 7 European union political institutions in Blue and citizens vital role in green and intergovernmental process in orange: 

To fully assess the political and economical role of European Union we have to understand how the union institutions work together:

Advantages of being a EU Member State: 

 In May 1st 2004, Hungary became a Full member of EU and we will take their 17 years of membership under spotlight to assess the benefits they gained from joining the European Union.From the period 2007 to 2013 Budapest had access to over 22.5 Billion Euros from the European Structural and Cohesion Funds, they were primarily distributed to enterprises and certain government bodies to restructure a national development plan (Hungarian Chamber Of Commerce and Industry, 2018), the funds were allocated to economic and transportation development to integrate the country in the EU massive internal market and minimize transportation costs by building an advanced infrastructure and accessible highways. They also focused on environmental and energy development to match the energy requirements and emissions benchmarks of the EU. Allocating resources and redirecting capital investment toward selective sectors and human development has brought Hungary numerous advantages. On the social level they were member of democratic stable and prosperous Union and well protected politically. In the economic level the funds allocated acted as a stimulus to the GDP it raised it from 104 B USD to 163 B USD in 2020 as the figure illustrates:

 Figure : Hungary Gross domestic Product (GDP) in current prices ( Adjusted for Inflation) from 1985 to 2025 (Statista,2021 )

This growth was attributed to exposure to EU 470M Customer market ( European Commission 2020) that facilitated the inflow of foreign direct investment thanks to general confidence in Euro and Stability of The union legislative ability to protect FDIs. SMEs & corporates significantly benefited from accessing the Union funds to support innovation and manufacturing that led to increase in domestic demand. Hungary also enjoyed friendlier taxation plans and free trading of goods and services within the EU zone. Moreover, the union set a mechanism to subsidize basic consumer goods to EU citizens, which dropped the overall CPI levels (consumer price index). The country became an exporting hub for other European countries after Helsinki became a key logistics pathway for its products.

Disadvantages of the EU Membership

We don’t think there will be a better case of EU membership disadvantages than United Kingdom and the reasons behind their exit from European Union.The EU gets funded by collecting membership fees oh yearly basis to finance their operations, the UK cost of membership in 2019 was 0,06% of their GDP that’s nearly 20 Billion USD annually, amounted as 11 B USD net after balancing receivables from EU (UK Parliament, 2019) . It’s still a high cost compared to the percentage of Budget and could have been invested to boost economic activity in failing sectors. Uk also was not satisfied how the EU spends their budget, the Common Agricultural Policy or what’s famously known as CAP takes about 39% out of their entire budget (European Parliament, 2019) , such policies have disrupted the agricultural markets by setting price floors on crops and lead to promoting over supply among Large-Land farmers and crashed the Small Land farmers (The Guardian, 2013), United kingdom rejected the price floors policy and called it highly inefficient and unfair for domestic farmers and consumers and it’s not a free market practice and contradicts with EU fundamental economic agenda. Uk also stressed about monetary policies commented that Euro is facing problems and is having counter productive implications rather than boosting economic growth by constantly supporting corporates that add no value or injecting billions of dollars to countries like Greece to bail them out from credits (BBVA, 2016) such actions have pushed the EU market into a Stagnation periods. UK raised red flags when the migration policies of the EU started to do more harm than good, the free movement of labor had severe implication British cities, they became overcrowded, caused real-estate prices to increase and put pressure on health care institutions since EU health card insurance permits EU residents to receive medical care as the British.

 Uk strongly argued that EU became another bureaucratic institution and with the introduction of Qualified Majority Voting system the union can revoke any decisions taken by member country even if its against the citizens interest and this also contradicts with democratic principles of EU. As a result, the UK government argues that decisions that concern British citizens should be taken by British citizens not the EU. 

Some Countries still considers that benefits of joining the Superpower outweighs potential damages, so what’s the criteria to applying for EU membership?

On June 1993 at Denmark the European Council sat and laid down various rules that define the eligibility of for neighboring countries and applicants that whish to join, criteria varied from political, economic , regulative and geographic requirements. This later on became known Copenhagen Criteria taken the name of the city where the criteria has been approved, the council states that ‘’ Membership requires that candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. Membership presupposes the candidate's ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union.’’ (EC, 1993)

Political Criterion:

The applicant country should create an environment where democracy and rule of law can coexist, the definitions of both of these terms might overlap. However, they are quite different on ground. Democracy should guarantee the effective participation of every member of the society including minorities and opposition, the government should establish a transparent and truthful communication channels with the citizens in order for them to determine the best course of action based on their interests and demands through a fully operational national parliament, which election process should meet the international benchmarks of democratic process and delegation of authority in presence of EU observers. (Arnull,2002)

The law in the other hand should be effective and enforced on every member of the society , subjective in nature retrospective in action. An establishment of independent judiciary system that does not answer to any executive body in the country. The parliament should be the only legislative body that amends and revokes laws and should not be controlled, monitored or represented by non-elected executive. Applicants should also enforce EU Laws and regulation and all legislative and executive bodies of the country should be aliened with Acquis, a common body of rights and obligations that operates in every EU country binding them to EU common Law. The EU also emphasized on human rights and applicant country laws should not limit it’s freedom in any way, human rights cannot granted or bartered nor oppressed in any form , that includes free speech and equal treatment of ethnic and religious minorities by considering them as distinctive groups.

The applicant country foreign policy should be aligned with EU’s mission to maintain peace and prosperity for al EU citizens any conflict with members can result reconsiderations of application based on conflict grounds, Turkey’s long conflict with Greece over Mediterranean natural resources and Cyprus geopolitical crisis had negative implication on the course of their accession on February 20th 2019 the European Union Parliament committee voted to suspend accession talks with Turkey. (Sinem Adar, Ilke Toygür, 2020)

Geographical Criterion:

Non-European countries are not eligible to apply for European union membership and contradict with their enlargement agenda. They identify potential candidates that aligns economically and politically with their interests, in 1987 Morocco have applied to join the EU and their application got revoked based on geographical grounds that morocco is not a European Country( European Parliament 1998). However, many non-Europeans countries enjoy varying degrees of integration economically or politically through agreements or treaties frameworks, most prominently the ENP (European Parliament, 2019) or Union for the Mediterranean that forms a set of agreements and relations with Mediterranean north African and western Asian countries. Friendlier customs and long term importing contracts can be a good example of signed agreements. The following figure shows different relationships with countries outside of the EU.

(Figure : Euler diagram showing the relationships between various multinational European organisations and agreements)

Economical Criterion:

As stated in above, the economic criterion is heavily influenced by the EU core beliefs in liberal principles that requires candidates to have an existing functioning economy demand and supply of goods, services and trade is completely liberalized and countries wishing to apply should have a stable macroeconomic foundation laws are only passed to enhance performance deregulate markets and remove trade barriers. They also require a strong financial sector to facilitate the integration of banking system in the Euro Zone moreover, an advanced financial law should be placed to promote and protect FDIs (foreign direct investments).

The candidate should also work on privatization of Government Linked Enterprises that operates in vital sectors in the economy as a crucial part of transition to democratic economic system to be able to compete with EU internal market. in addition, thy should show a willingness to restructure the country resources according to EU plan, invest in human capital to be able to transform the economy to knowledge based products and services and cope with international technological benchmarks. It was obvious by observing countries that recently joined the Union like Croatia in 2013 & Bulgaria 2007, that the higher the degree of integration with EU economic policies before accession the faster the accession negations will go. (Tanja , 2006)

Potential Joiners

In the recent years the European Union has identified potential countries that can add economic and political value to the union in their long-term enlargement agenda in the light of increasing challenges and they were allowed to commence applications. Turkey have applied in 1987 and commenced accession negotiations with the commission and still resolving their conflict with Greece and aligning their economic and social institutions with Acquis, North Macedonia in the other hand have applied in 2005 and began accession talks in March 2020. However, Bulgaria threatened to veto North Macedonia talks with EU and blocked their official negotiations in November 2020 arguing that North Macedonia deliberately stalling the progress of their peace treaty with Bulgaria and promoting hate speech toward Bulgarian minorities. (Jacopo, 2020)

Montenegro also applied in 2008 and identified as eligible candidate by 2009 and has been receiving 500M Euro in development aid yearly since then as Pre-accession assistance funding, the commission stated that among existing candidates Montenegro is having the fastest pace of preparations and alignment with EU Acquis. Among all existing candidates Kosovo’s application seems to be the most problematic, their independence from Serbia has not been recognized by 5 out 27 EU members and Kosovo’s economic situation is far from European benchmarks. Therefore an accession negotiation has not been commenced yet.

Conclusion

The European Union promotes it self as an important pillar in the international diplomacy and the early beginnings of its creating can be traced in the aftermath of WW2 to foster economic and social development between the six founding countries: France, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and Germany.

Today it holds 27 active members and success of the union to can be observable in the economic level however, humanitarian aid and their efforts to maintain peace worldwide can be highly debatable, they promote globalization and yet their bureaucratic agendas move toward regionalization. The fate of current EU members and candidates is unpredictable in such times of uncertainty. United kingdom left the EU after 47 years of membership and gave us a good example how the union can be an environment to incubate developing countries on the expense of developed ones.

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