A larger EU will take many by surprise

Bar an unlikely last-minute impasse over money, the European Union's historic eastward enlargement is a done deal, politically.

After potential pitfalls were cleared - from elections in Slovakia and Germany to an Irish referendum and an EU summit in Brussels - financial markets, too, have all but discounted the 15-state bloc's 2004 expansion into ex-communist Eastern Europe.

But, from Tipperary to Tallinn, there is ignorance and indifference to the EU's ambitious plan to unify a continent plagued by centuries of conflict and decades of division.

The 10 candidate nations and the current EU states must thrash out a deal by a Copenhagen summit on December 12-13 on how much money poor eastern farmers should get from Brussels.

But many citizens say they know little and care less about what enlargement will mean.

A survey of 16,000 EU citizens, published last month by Eurobarometer, the European Commission's polling unit, showed over two thirds broadly backed enlargement, believing it would guarantee peace and boost the bloc's standing in the world.

But only one in five felt they knew much about it. Over half feared the cost of enlargement and felt they would lose out as funding was diverted to the poorer new members.

Others had concerns about crime and job security, easy prey for tales of human trafficking through central Europe and migrant workers seeking better pay in the West.

Every other Briton asked (49 per cent) said they had not heard about EU enlargement. And three out of four Portuguese, and Britons, could not name a single EU candidate country.

According to a separate Eurobarometer poll, just over 50 per cent of those in the 10 leading candidates support joining the EU, with outright opposition rising to 14 per cent.

There is alarm in the poorer candidate states at the lack of interest in the EU in enlargement and many blame Western leaders for failing to explain the project and win the hearts and minds of ordinary people.

Some fear becoming second class citizens in a bigger Union, stigmatised by decades of Soviet-era communism that cowed social development as much as it held back economic growth.

Former Polish prime minister Jozef Oleksy, head of parliament's Europe committee and a delegate at the Convention on the Future of Europe, the body working under ex-French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing on an EU constitution, said EU leaders had done little to break the old stereotyping of the East.

"I am very dissatisfied with the fact that EU member states know much less about us than we know about them," he said.

"This stems from the times of the Iron Curtain, from a very unified picture of the Russian camp, dominated by ideology, and where there was no interest in the nature of any society."

He urged western leaders to do more to change attitudes. "We have to integrate not just at the country or government level, but also as societies. This is a challenge for both sides but seems hardly noticed in the 15 member states," Oleksy said.

Poland's EU integration minister Danuta Huebner said: "There was not much talking about enlargement in the member states... I think a lack of interest is a real problem among EU citizens."

Europe's political elite, flush from launching the euro single currency, has trumpeted the EU's biggest enlargement as a necessity for bringing stability and prosperity.

But many feel they have not trumpeted loudly enough. Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, head of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw think-tank, said Brussels had run a convincing euro campaign, but had virtually ignored enlargement.

The European Commission must get the campaign into full swing, and quickly, she said, "since each month's delay can have negative results on ratification of (accession) treaties in member states".

But for many on either side of the old Iron Curtain, enlargement, creating a vast single market of close to 450 million consumers, remains an economic expedient rather than a real joining of peoples.

After a brief flirtation with independence, subjugation to the old Soviet Union will merely be replaced by domination by a faceless Brussels bureaucracy, some candidates believe.

But it's not just Brussels and the West that have lacked punch in selling the enlargement reality.

Focused on winning EU entry at the negotiating table, candidate country governments have also often failed to win over voters, many still choking on the pill of tough economic reform.

"It's about connecting with the man in the street," said Thomas Glaser, who heads the European Commission delegation's information unit in Hungary.

Glaser said information campaigns were delayed due to ministerial in-fighting over who should control budgets, leaving a lack of strategy as time becomes critical.

In recent opinion polls, over 70 per cent of Hungary's 10 million population said they supported EU membership. But the same polls showed 75 per cent of them knew very little about it.

Some analysts say there could be a backlash among the 75 million citizens of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta and the three Baltic states against what may be seen as enlargement by stealth.

There is also a danger that indignation may be added to ignorance and indifference as the newcomers discover there is no pot of gold awaiting them in the wealthy western club.

This could cause problems when they are asked to vote on EU membership in referendums in the first half of next year.

Politicians are beginning to prepare for a wave of disillusionment once the eastern applicants join the EU and people see no overnight benefits.

Poland's Huebner said broad campaigns were now becoming more targeted at those who will most feel the impact of EU enlargement - the young, the business community and farmers.

"If entrepreneurs understand what membership means, they'll be able to function actively and make effective use of all the possibilities, and counteract the dangers and risks," she said.

"It's very important we understand what is waiting for us." Glaser also noted a shift, from informing people what the EU is and does, to telling them what they can get out of it.

"This is a result of seeing how mean the EU is being," he said, noting the tough terms on offer for farmers and a smaller pot of enlargement money than was pledged at an EU summit in Berlin in 1999.

"The campaign has promised to address real issues, real concerns," said Glaser, who regularly tours Hungary telling people they will not be better off the day after joining the EU.

"I tell them: 'If you're knocked down on January 2, 2004, you'll be picked up in the same clanking, old ambulance and dragged off on the same potholed roads to the same local hospital. There won't be an EU doctor and EU hospital waiting for you."