Open the Doors

Their calculations go beyond trade and stability to include immigration as well. Publics may fear it but leaders understand the demographic imperative: in the face of declining birthrates, their economic future depends on imported labor. Though it may seem harsh, most prefer East Europeans to the alternatives. Note, too, that West European states retain the legal right to block immigration, at least for the next five years. Those 600,000 Poles are in Britain today because the government chose to permit them. While the British Home Office has lately been hinting that it might impose some restrictions on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, it's unclear how tough they will be. Significantly, Tony Blair is reported to have met secretly in recent weeks with businessmen favoring free immigration. Brendan Barber, head of the main federation of British labor, the Trades Union Congress, supports Balkan immigration as well.

Enlargement is also the core of what EU foreign-policy guru Robert Cooper terms Europe's "postmodern" foreign policy. Whereas the U.S. flexes "hard power" in Iraq and Iran, the EU deploys "civilian power" in its neighborhood, influencing countries to adopt its ways by slowly admitting them to the club--with conditionality. In one country after another, potential nationalist or authoritarian parties made way for more-democratic, market-oriented politicians whose major goal was EU membership. The contrast with 15 years of civil war in the former Yugoslavia reminds us what life in the Balkans would be like without the promise of EU membership. Since the Berlin wall fell, enlargement has proved to be the most cost-effective instrument for expanding the Western economic and political practice--far more cost-effective than U.S. military intervention. As Prof. José Torreblanca at Madrid's prestigious Real Instituto Elcano puts it: "It's not just the EU's best foreign policy; it's their only foreign policy."

The effects are visible in Romania and Bulgaria. Local politicians have an incentive to recast themselves as pro-European, anticorruption democrats. Consider the telegenic mayor of Sofia, Borisov Boyko, who was once the bodyguard of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria's last Communist strongman. Boyko has become one of the country's most popular politicians via Sofia's anti-mafia task force. He helped hunt down criminals and corrupt government officials--making sure to be there when TV cameras recorded the final arrest. Businesses have responded to reform with investment directed at the EU market, creating a large constituency for compliance with EU rules and eventual membership. As a result, both Romania and Bulgaria appear to have implemented most EU procedures--even in sensitive areas such as agriculture and energy. Commission data (too sensitive to release) and academic analyses suggest that compliance rates in the 10 new member states are in fact higher than in many older member states--not least France and Germany. No wonder Bulgarian economic growth is nearing 6 percent.