The Atlantic burden-sharing debate
formation in 1958. It has held out the possibility of integration into a Union
based on shared political norms and access to a large common market, and has
been willing to assist this process through substantial financial transfers, most
recently to Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland. Germany has been prepared to
bankroll most of these costs, spending around 0.6 per cent of its GNP annually
17
on net transfers to the EU budget during the late 1990s. Due in no small part
to this process, the economic prospects of these states have been transformed
over the last two decades, and their position as stable democracies has been
consolidated.
With a new wave of eastern enlargement due shortly, the EU now faces new
costs, with all their associated burden-sharing challenges. Enlargement offers an
opportunity for extending the west European security community, with all the
benefits this would imply for the security and prosperity of existing EU member
states. Yet it will also require far-reaching changes in how the Union works,
and where it spends its money. Once Poland, Hungary and the Baltic republics
become members, moreover, the pressure for further expansion will increase, as
new members in turn seek to ensure stability on their own eastern and southern
borders. Even if states such as Serbia and Ukraine are unable to qualify for EU
membership for at least a decade, therefore, new member states will argue that a
significant part of the EU budget should be used to support reform in these states.
Eastern enlargement will challenge the nature of longstanding burden-
sharing arrangements within the EU, just as southern enlargement did in the
1980s. As the EU’s largest net contributor by a considerable margin, the
German government is concerned that it may also be called upon to provide the
lion’s share of the additional funds that enlargement will require. In response, it
has become a strong supporter of fundamental changes in the funding of the
Common Agricultural Policy, despite the problems in its relationship with
France that this may create. It is likely to press for a reorientation of structural
aid programmes away from today’s major net beneficiaries (Greece, Portugal
and Spain), in order to release resources for the next generation of new member
states. It may also question the justification for the UK’s special budget rebate,
which ensures, on current rules, that it will be refunded two-thirds of any
18
increase in its assessed contributions as a result of enlargement.
Yet one of the consequences of the EU’s new defence remit could be to
encourage the UK and France to argue that their greater contributions to
common defence efforts should be taken into account when Germany seeks a
more equitable sharing of EU contributions. Among the most important recent
gains for the credibility of European security policy has been Germany’s
willingness to contribute troops on the ground to common efforts. But it is
17
Average annual net contribution for 1995–7. By comparison, the UK’s net contribution to the EU
budget was 0.17% of GNP, France’s was 0.12% and Italy’s was 0.11%. Spain received net benefits
equivalent to 1.4% of its GNP. See Chalmers, Sharing security, pp. 80–114.
Evidence by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee,
18
European Union enlargement, HC86 (1998/99), March 1999, appendix 15, para. 15. See also Chalmers,
Sharing security, pp. 99–110.
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