Brexit has not ended the EU’s institutional bickering

Following Brexit, the EU has moved on, but that has not meant the end of the various fundamental debates it is facing.

When it comes to domestic policy making, the absence of the UK has been clearly visible, as the bloc went on a joint borrowing binge to finance €800 billion in “Covid recovery” funds. Meanwhile, the European Commission’s Green Deal is resulting in expanding “climate” levies and regulation, as well as a protectionist external climate tariff for the rest of the world to compensate for the fact that third countries are not as enthusiastic to copy the EU’s burdensome climate policies. None of this would have been passed with the UK still on board, apart from perhaps some of the “net zero” agenda, which has been firmly embraced in London.

Yet on other fronts, the EU-27 remains deeply divided, particularly concerning the challenge of integrating certain Eastern European countries without compromising the bloc’s internal standards.

Enlargement

A key challenge for the post-Brexit EU is whether it should welcome any new EU member states. In 2014, then-EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker pledged an enlargement pause until at least 2019, which has basically been extended until 2024, when the current Commission term ends.

Two non-island EU member-states are very keen to join Schengen: Bulgaria and Romania

However, the war in Ukraine has drastically changed matters. While the European Commission is pushing for more enlargement, France has traditionally been wary of this agenda. Conversely, enlargement tended to be a UK priority, as a means to both contain Russia and avoid excessive EU centralisation, the assumption being that a greater number of member states makes the latter more difficult.

While a Ukrainian accession remains a distant prospect, and top EU politicians only pay lip service to it at best, questions have been raised on whether some kind of arrangement could perhaps not be found. The same is true for the six Western Balkan states that are not members of the EU.

Anticipating more pressure to grant Ukraine EU membership, French president Emmanuel Macron launched the new “European Political Community”  last year, which allows Ukraine and others currently outside of the EU framework to be more closely involved with it. He thereby also cited Georgia and Moldova as priority countries, apart from Ukraine and the Western Balkans. The background here is that the EU is split on whether to grant Ukraine candidate status.

Schengen worries

However, debates are not limited to simple EU accession. Within the bloc, there are already clubs with different degrees of integration. The first one is of course the less than stable Eurozone. Since 2015, no new members had been admitted until Croatia was welcomed at the beginning of this year.

A second prominent club is the Schengen area, whose members are required to abolish all passport and all other types of border control at their mutual borders, even if the temporary reactivation of spot checks remains possible. The Schengen area does count 4 non-EU countries, but 23 out of its 27 participants are also members of the EU. The UK never was a member, nor are EU island nations  Ireland and Cyprus, as for islands, the benefits of removing passport checks small relative to the heightened security risks.

Yet two non-island EU member-states are very keen to join Schengen: Bulgaria and Romania. This idea continues to face opposition in parts of the EU. While the European Commission supports Bulgaria’s accession because it has complied with Schengen’s technical criteria, Bulgarian and Romanian accession was ultimately vetoed by the Netherlands and Austria last December, while Croatia received the green light—but other Western European member states are secretly happy that the dirty work of saying “no” was done for them.

Specific requirements on corruption and judicial reform have been demanded by the Dutch, who remain rightly concerned about Sofia’s endemic corruption and rule of law issues. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian government claims it is able to deliver the requested reforms, hoping that the Schengen veto could be lifted by October.

The EU’s weak underbelly

There is a fresh glimmer of hope for Bulgaria’s Schengen prospects, given the surprise eleventh hour agreement struck on 22 May to form a new government by GERB politician Mariya Gabriel – who recently stepped down from her EU Commissioner post – and anti-corruption coalition ‘We Continue the Change’-Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB).  

Gabriel – set to become deputy prime minister and foreign minister before assuming the top job in nine months – and her coalition partners are expected to prioritise constitutional reforms to root out state corruption, particularly within the judiciary, while her tenure as an EU commissioner and her party GERB’s affiliation with the largest group in the European Parliament, the “European People’s Party” (EPP), are likely to help Bulgaria’s Schengen cause.

Yet Sofia’s deep-seated corruption cannot be fixed quickly. Unfortunately, the reality is that Bulgaria continues to rank as one of the most corrupt countries in the EU, with little to no improvement on this front over the past decade. Prosecutor-General Ivan Geshev has been singled out as one of the main culprits, accused of impeding progress by widely abusing his power. Geshev has been criticised for shielding Bulgaria’s powerful political and business elite from corruption charges, including former prime minister Boyko Borissov, who may be investigated for money laundering himself.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link

Geshev has further corroded the integrity of Bulgaria’s criminal justice system by reportedly wielding his virtually limitless power to launch dubious investigations and expropriate assets from private companies. For example, in January, Geshev raided the Sofia offices of FinTech platform Nexo, whose employees’ financial support of the anti-corruption opposition now set for a return to government gives credence to allegations that the investigation was politically motivated.

Antoni Trenchev and Kosta Kantchev, co-founders of Nexo, described the attacks as “lawless arbitrariness and repression from the Bulgarian political class, which uses the local authorities for racketeering”. Other high-profile events set alarm bells ringing, wherein a leading Bulgarian entrepreneur made an abrupt exit from the country after being instrumental in unmasking a deceitful operation, allegedly linked to the prosecution’s coordinated takeover of a thriving company. In a separate but notably similar event, the proprietor of Hippoland –  a prominent toy store chain – found himself and his employees under heightened scrutiny and pressure following his public expression of support for the opposition demonstrations in 2020.

Changing tack in Brussels

Despite the unaccountable Geshev running roughshod over the rule of law, a captured judiciary and dismal international corruption rankings, Bulgaria has somehow not featured highly on the EU’s rule of law radar; Brussels’ wrath seems mainly reserved for Hungary and Poland. In contrast, the UK and US are taking action, slapping sanctions on several Bulgarian politicians and tycoons for alleged corruption earlier this year.

Whether sanctions will do much is the question, given the poor track record of such an approach. What the European Union could do is refrain from showering its corruption-plagued member states with even more EU funds. This is likely to only make matters worse and ultimately undermine the efforts of reform-oriented politicians that convinced many Bulgarian voters. The double standards that are visible in EU “rule of law” proceedings should also give rise to the conclusion that it is best to simply cut EU funds for everyone and not only those deemed to violate the “rule of law” given the weak impact of EU funds on economic growth.

Obviously, politically speaking, this is not very realistic. What EU leaders can do however, is continue to veto Bulgaria’s Schengen access for now, at least as long as there is no material progress when it comes to corruption. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and this is very much the case for the European Union.