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European Union
The installation in Feb., 2000, of a
conservative Austrian government that included the
right-wing Freedom party, whose leaders had made
xenophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic pronouncements, led
the other EU members to impose a number of sanctions on
Austria that limited high-level contacts with the
Austrian government. Enthusiasm for the sanctions soon
waned, however, among smaller EU nations, and the issue
threatened to divide the EU. A face-saving fact-finding
commission recommended ending the sanctions, stating
that the Austrian government had worked to protect human
rights, and the sanctions were ended in September.
In 2003 the EU and ten non-EU European nations
(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Cyprus, and Malta) signed
treaties that resulted in the largest expansion of the
EU the following year, increasing the its population by
20% and its land area by 23%. Most of the newer members
are significantly poorer than the largely W European
older members. The old and new member nations at first
failed to agree on a constitution for the organization;
the main stumbling block concerned voting, with Spain
and Poland reluctant to give up a weighted system of
voting scheduled for 2006 that would give them a
disproportionate influence in the EU relative to their
populations. In Oct., 2004, however, EU nations signed a
constitution with a provision requiring a supermajority
of nations to pass legislation. The constitution, which
needed to be ratified by all members to come into
effect, was rejected by voters in France and the
Netherlands in 2005, leading EU leaders to pause in
their push for its ratification.
Meanwhile, in 2003 the EU embarked, in minor
ways, on its first official military missions when EU
peacekeeping forces replaced the NATO force in Macedonia
and were sent by the United Nations to Congo (Kinshasa);
the following year the EU assumed responsibility for
overseeing the peacekeepers in Bosnia. EU members also
took steps toward developing a common defense strategy
independent of NATO, and agreed in 2004 to admit
Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. José Manuel
Barroso succeeded
Prodi as president of the European Commission late in
2004. Accession talks with Turkey were partially
suspended in Dec., 2006, over the issue of Turkish
relations with Cyprus because Turkey was unwilling to
open its ports to Cypriot trade unless the EU eased its
trade restrictions on North Cyprus.
The EU opted for incremental reforms over a new
constitution in 2007, when member nations signed the
Lisbon Treaty. The treaty, slated to come into force in
2009 after ratification by all EU nations, would
reorganize the European Council, establish a single EU
foreign policy official, and reform the EU's system of
voting, among other changes. (The reforms would be
phased in through 2017.) In June, 2008, however, Irish
voters—the only national electorate given the
opportunity to ratify the treaty—rejected it in a
referendum, a potentially fatal setback.
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