April 2002, commentary written for the European Policy Forum

The end of the tunnel is near. During his Prague visit on the 11th April Commissioner Verheugen gave a clear signal to the Czech public about the timetable of Czech EU accession. In December 2002, at the end of the coming Danish presidency, the negotiations with the candidate states will be concluded at the Copenhagen summit. In Prague, Verheugen said for the first time in public, that he agreed with the Greek presidency, that the Accession Treaties with the future members will be signed in spring 2003 on the Acropolis in Athens.

That means, that in light of the holiday season next year, a suitable time for a Czech referendum about EU membership would be June or October 2003.

The conclusion of the large eastern enlargement of the EU might receive a considerable symbolic dimension. The road to membership will lead from Copenhagen to Copenhagen - in June 1993 the Membership criteria for former communist countries were set for the first time and in December 2002, again in Copenhagen under the Danish presidency, the negotiation process will be concluded. The largest enlargement of the EU in its history will then be confirmed on the Acropolis in Athens, the symbolical cradle of European civilisation.

To bring the enlargement process to a successful conclusion demanded a lot of energy both from the candidate countries and the EU. The whole process should therefore be evaluated as a whole and not separately in its individual components. This is also why the ratification process will be conducted as a "package" of the most likely 10 countries and not for each country separately. The approach to bundle difficult compromises into comprehensive "packages" has so far proven to be a successful path for European integration.

The biggest danger for a successful entry of the Czech Republic to the EU will emerge next year, when individual interest groups (both in the Czech Republic and the EU) will try to use the last possibility before EU enlargement to push forward their own fragmented interests and might even demand special conditions for the Czech accession treaty.

There exists a real danger, that this problem might emerge during the Czech campaign before the referendum about EU membership. Even though some individual objections against EU membership might be well founded, the efforts of some groups to create a negative campaign against EU membership in the Czech Republic cannot have any legitimacy, because they do not offer any viable alternative. Staying out of the EU would have a very negative, long term impact on the Czech Republic. It is worth mentioning in this context, that Czech EU accession is taking place at a time, when even Norway and Iceland are reconsidering EU membership and even Switzerland is opening itself to the EU on the basis of a freshly negotiated package of bilateral agreements. To search for alternatives outside the EU would be certainly absurd - it would bring not only an economic and political weakening of the Czech Republic on the international scene, but also a refusal to take a Czech share of responsibility for the future development of the European continent.

The attitude of all Czech politicians and influential actors towards Czech EU membership should therefore be as pragmatic as possible - Czech EU membership should be seen as a symbolic conclusion of the post-communist transformation process of the whole country. Therefore, let's take up a positive attitude towards the issue of Czech EU membership as such and let's look for solutions of existing problems already from the perspective of a EU Member State. This would save us a lot of problems and unnecessary costs.