Györgyi Kocsis

Letter from Brussels

My dear Madam, I have not the faintest idea what measures will be in force after May 1st. I'll be happy to be told three days in advance...," the polite young official said with an embarrassed face at the desk handling residence permits for foreigners in Belgium at the Auderghem municipal office in Brussels. This was after he had already sent the Hungarian correspondent back, with similar politeness, to obtain documents which had not been required previously. It is quite possible that the friendly young municipal official was actually being over-optimistic. Belgian bureaucracy, never particularly smooth in its operations, will probably "sweat out" the new measures three days (if not three months) after the deadline measures intended to free journalists from the new member states from at least some of the annual torture involved in renewing residence permits.
The occasional battle with Belgian bureaucracy is good for a journalist's health in that it maintains a sound level of adreneline, it is also useful in developing a sense of reality. For the Belgium that a Brussels correspondent spends most time in is not the Belgium whose citizens are jarred by the Flemish - Walloon conflict or the rise of the extreme right or mass murderers of children. Nor is it the country where fingers are not enough to count the parliamentary parties and in which, at election time, a Liberal Walloon minister urges Flemish voters to support candidates of the Flemish Christian Democratic Party and thus block the Walloon Socialists.
No, the Brussels correspondent lives in "EU Land", the centre of which, as everybody knows, is not the capital of Belgium that boasts one of the world's most charming main squares, but "Brussels", residing at the Place Schumann, encircled by the gigantic office buildings of the Union and at a safe distance from the Grand Palace featured so prominently in the guidebooks. A correspondent only meets Belgian citizens at the hairdresser's, at the check-outs of the supermarché or in the person of the attendant of the trateure, a Belgian "invention" worthy of the Nobel Prize, which offers meat and charcuterie, cold buffet products and ready made foods that do taste as if they were home-made. Maybe also in the lift of the apartment house - only the friendly neighbour turns out to be German, living there for thirty years, thus one of the foreigners making up a full third of the one-million residents. The Brussels correspondent also tries to make the best of the fact that, by train, London is a mere three hours away, and Paris an hour and a half, and Amsterdam is a two and half hour drive, all full of tempting cultural delights. Consequently she may easily complete her four or five years without ever properly admiring the carved stone lattice of the town hall of Louvain or actually learning what ommengang (a Flemish carnival of medieval origin) is. By the end of her term, her address book is filled with Scandinavian, Baltic, Mediterranean Arab, American and Southeast Asian names, and when she is asked what Belgium was like, she has to rack her brain in embarrassment.
This is due to no lack of interest but to life and the job. The some twenty-five thousand officials and thousands of diplomats in the permanent missions of the member states, the members of the European Parliament and its staff, the lobbyists, the consultants, the specialist institutions, settled around the institutions both literally and figuratively speaking, and of course the journalists, three thousand or so at any time, constitute a continuously expanding universe in the heart of the continent. It is both inward-turning, for what else could be the most frequent topic of professional and social life than the EU itself, whose much-mocked jargon and all its acronyms, are understood by few people outside "Brussels", whereas here it is used with a sense of intimateness, as the language of the initiated. This mini-universe, however, is also outward-looking, since its fundamental feature is a mixing and permanent exchange of ideas between multitudes of European citizens, the like of which is to be seen nowhere else. In Brussels, a British Eurocrat sits in conference together with Spaniards and Finns, a Greek journalist has lunch with an Estonian member of the European Parliament, the Hungarian diplomat has a working dinner with his Cypriot colleague, and a French interpreter is courting a Bulgarian radio journalist.
In Brussels, the only permanent thing is change. The first question asked of a newcomer at a social gathering as soon as his or her country of origin has been clarified is "when did you come?" followed immediately by "how long are you going to stay?" And in Brussels something is always happening. The fixed point in the life of the "horde of journalists" is the daily midday news conference. The media is being bombed by the political statements of the party factions and committees of the European Parliament. But the real juicy bits for journalists are of course the periodical skirmishes between ministers of the member states in the Council, or those between heads of government during the quarterly summit meetings. Those with any energy left may also visit any of the conferences, seminars, workshops and press breakfasts staged by the innumerable international unions, research institutions and civil organisations all centred in Brussels and dealing with problems of a European significance. In Brussels, the shoots of a common European media, much desired by many believers in integration, have already taken root. Accredited journalists from twenty-five nations report home on basically the same events, and on the basis of information coming from the same sources, even if somewhat differently, tailored for German, Portuguese, Slovenian or Hungarian audiences. The "exchange of news" is also continuous; the correspondents mutually question each other about the reception of a proposal or a community decision in each other's country. Such information is also incorporated in the reports, broadening their readers' horizons, connecting the public opinions of various nations with one another. This communication perceptibly intensified with the approaching of the enlargement. The correspondents of the new member states no longer merely receive but have also become sources of information on the informal news exchanges of Brussels, magnifying and adding shading to the image of East Europe held by the West European media. The correspondents in Brussels also share, to a greater or lesser extent, their frustration with editors at home, because in most countries "Brussels" is far away, and Europe is all too easily pushed into the background by domestic issues.

Still, the metaphorical distance between Budapest and Brussels is getting shorter by the day with the approach of May 1st. Ultimately - even though long years of preparation for accession were expressly intended to help the new member states move into the Union more smoothly - on the day of accession Hungarians and the Hungarian media will awaken to something new: a number of things that were "foreign politics" before will suddenly turn into "domestic politics". According to some estimates, half of the time spent in session by the parliaments of EU member states today is being taken up by simply transplant-ing Community rules into the national legal system. Hungary up to now received Union laws and the strategic decision on which they were based "ready-made", as an external observer of the debates the member states were conducting, as rules which they simply had to adopt; from May 1 on, however, the greatest change will be that Hungary will have its say in the common decisions and play a part in the common thinking. All this will demand a high degree of awareness and responsibility from the political actors, a social discussion of issues relegated into the background earlier, and a more open mind.
Representatives of the Hungarian government have been sitting in on the sessions of the Council of Ministers, the main decision-making body of the Union, since signing the accession agreement on April 16, 2003. However, there is a world of difference between making a speech without consequences and speaking and voting in a responsible European manner, and being held accountable at home for that vote. (Ministers of the new member states will have the right to vote only after May 1.) Similarly, delegates of the parliaments of the new member states, including Hungary, have been present in the European Parliament in an observer status for nearly a year now, but their rights are limited; they are not entitled to speak at the plenary sessions and may not submit proposals on their own, only if a fellow representative from a "full-right" member state acts as a go-between. This will also change radically after May 1, and even more after the European parliamentary elections in June, when the 24 directly elected Hungarian Euro MPs will be able to speak and vote in Strasbourg in full equality, and before the entire public of the continent and their own constituents.
The right and requirement of having a voice in the European decisions will demand a greater intellectual effort from the new member states than they made so far. "Tell us what to do, and we'll do it!" one of the Commission's officials quoted the request, betraying complete helplessness, of an official from a candidate member state during the negotiations over accession. A diplomat from another candidate member country laments the amount of effort it takes for him to find out his government's position, if any, on certain issues. It will probably not take long for the Hungarian MEP leaving for Strasbourg with the "protection of the interests of the Hungarian nation" in mind, to find out that the bodies of the Union are not battlefields where national interests are asserted as opposed to the interests of other nations; quite to the contrary, they are forums for the identification and development of common interests. As a consequence, a national "team spirit" is rare in the European Parliament. Voting lines run between parties professing different ideologies, cutting across the team of delegates from the same county.
The entry of "the ten" is naturally anticipated with a great amount of expectation and guessing in Brussels. The main subject of interest is first and foremost the person and character of the ten new candidate Commissioners: what their professionalism and language skills will be like, will they be cooperative and constructive members of the legislative and executive body, will they be able to resist, perhaps better than some current Commissioners, political pressure coming from home, once they have taken the oath to serve European interests only in their new capacity. Most, of course, will not be strangers emerging and coming to Brussels from total obscurity. As holders of some kind of government position, they have already had ample opportunity to make the acquaintance, "from the other side of the counter", with the present Eurocrats now accepting them as colleagues. The new role, however, will require new qualities as well.
The enlargement will bring about a gradual influx of officials from the new member states. At the moment, some five hundred people from "the ten" are working under temporary contracts in the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, which employ some twenty-five thousand Eurocrats altogether. The majority of the new employees are university graduates or young officials with a few years of experience in public administration, all multi-lingual. This year the European Commission intends to recruit another 800 new employees from a "labour stock" sifted through a severe competitive testing process, and the number of future employees from the new member states will reach four thousand by the end of the decade.
Those plans can be accomplished of course only if "the European government" is at long last able to return to its huge, renovated headquarters. The Commission had to vacate its almost symbolic, star-shaped centre, the Berlaymont Palace in 1991, after the walls turned out to contain carcinogenic asbestos. Since then, the officials of the Commission, dispersed in a number of offices rented temporarily, are patiently waiting for the Belgian government to comply with its obligation, and make the building habitable again by the accepted deadline: the end of April, 2004. For the moment the fulfilment of that promise is very much in doubt. Failing to fulfil it, the Belgian government will have to pay over-run costs of e220 000 per day out of the pockets of the Belgian taxpayers. Time is also running out for the Belgian authorities as regards the new "European School", which has to be built because of the enlargement. Currently there are three such schools in Brussels, funded from the budget of the Union, in which the children of the employees of the European institutions are taught partly in their native language but mainly in French, English and German. According to estimates, in the next five years, room will have to be made for some three thousand Polish, Czech, Hungarian and other East European children, but it looks as if the fourth school will not be completed before 2008, so the "Eurokids", will be among the first to experience directly all the favourable and less than favourable consequences of the unification of Europe.
Another subject of universal speculation is which of the existing characteristics of the EU - good and bad "traditions" - will be strengthened by the newcomers. The practice of unprincipled bargaining, for example, can be learned fast. "I did not agree with a word of what you said but I supported you because your support may come in handy some day....," a broadly grinning Austrian diplomat explained his "position" during a discussion with an astonished Hungarian colleague. Many are wary that some of the new member states, despite having entered the EU era, will not be able to break away from their "victim" mentality, their constant referring to the historical debts owed to them by the Great Powers, constantly making demands on that basis in an unproductive way. It may well be that, as a consequence of the enlargement, Eurosceptical political movements may gain new strength in some EU countries. Indications of this can already be felt as the European parliamentary election campaign is gathering momentum; economic difficulties are blamed by many on the Union not only in the West but also in the East. A certain loss of illusions may, however, be regarded as healthy in both halves of Europe, now on the threshold of unification. "The European Union is not like a parental home where we found ourselves by the will of nature as children," one of the experienced 'gurus' of integration, who has lived in Brussels for the past ten years, explained recently. "The EU is rather like a long-term relationship into which one enters as a grown-up with a mature mind: it must provide proof day after day to justify its existence".

 

Györgyi Kocsis
is on the staff of Heti Világgazdaság, an economic weekly.