EU enlargement was one of the main topics on the agenda at the European Political Community summit in Granada on 5 October. Lea Ypi writes that much like an Albanian xhiro, Europe continues to go round in circles over the issue

Ypi, Lea

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LSE Research Online

Europe’s xhiro – the EU enlargementprocessEU enlargement was one of the main topics on the agenda at the European PoliticalCommunity summit in Granada on 5 October. Lea Ypi writes that much like an Albanianxhiro, Europe continues to go round in circles over the issue.When I was growing up in the 1980s in communist Albania, there was very little to do inwarm summer evenings except for the xhiro. The xhiro (pronounced jee-ro and derivedfrom the Latin girare or the ancient Greek γῦρος, literally going round in circles) waswhat other Europeans might more dispassionately call a passeggiata, or a promenade,or a Spazierengang. But there was more to the xhiro than any of these words cancapture: a ritual of hope and resilience, as if you did not care that there was nothing elseto do apart from the xhiro, as if among the myriad of non-existent alternative activities,the xhiro was the best in any case.What did the xhiro involve? In the case of my hometown, Durrës, on the Adriatic coast,people would wear their best clothes and, as soon as the sun set, stroll through the citycentre until they reached the waterfront. But explaining where the xhiro culminated issomewhat misleading. One risks making it sound as if it had a purpose: to gosomewhere, or to meet someone, or to get something done. The truth is: there was none.The xhiro was an end in itself. It had its own rules, its own symbolism, even its ownrhythms. Not too fast (since that would have implied one was trying to arrive somewhere)nor too slow (since that would have provoked a human congestion and caused everyoneto stop).In many ways, the xhiro was like the European enlargement process. It went on forever,it went on in circles, and the question of where exactly it was going seemed like asingularly inappropriate one to ask. In its circularity, in its predictability, in its formulaicmonotony, it was both hopeless and hopeful, joyfully defiant and miserably resigned.But there are also other elements that make me think about Europe in connection tothese youthful strolls. In Durrës, going out for the xhiro was like taking an imaginary tourPage 1 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023through European history. One would typically walk past a small, run-down,archaeological site, where broken columns evoked the ancient days in which the city wascalled Epidamnos, a name the Romans later changed perhaps because there wassomething of the damnos – or damnation in it.The exiled oligarchs of Epidamnos feature prominently in Thucydides’ PeloponnesianWar, one of the foundational texts of European civilisation, and one of the first lessonsabout power and realism in the international realm. They also feature in Aristotle’sPolitics as an example of the degeneration of oligarchic rule: the rich turning against thepoor, the poor wrestling control from the rich, the birth of demagogues. Power, wealth,realpolitik: if that all sounds familiar, it’s because the cultural heritage of Europe is madeof universal values but also of universal violations.Violations and valuesJust a little beyond the ruins, there was a Roman amphitheatre (or half an amphitheatre,since the rest is still buried underground, in hope that one day it might be resurrected byEU funds). It is the largest amphitheatre in the Balkans, built by emperor Traianus in thesecond century AD. Although, to be more specific, Traianus only commissioned theworks; the stones were laid by nameless slaves. It is not just that violations and values,coexist, it is that sometimes one is a pre-requisite for the other.Further into the xhiro, just behind the amphitheatre there were the city’s Byzantine walls,erected after an earthquake by the eastern emperor Anastasius Dicorus, himself bornand raised in the city. And on the other side of the wall, there was the Venetian tower,from the time in which Durrës was known as the Duchy of Durazzo, a colony of theRepublic of Venice recovered from the Normans, later contested between the Anjous,the Serbs and the Hungarians, before the conflict was decisively resolved with theexpansion of the Ottoman Empire. Of which, oddly there are only a few traces: an oldmosque, converted to a youth centre during the communists’ forcible embrace ofatheism, some houses, a couple of shops.When the Cold War ended, everything changed. The xhiro became longer. It took peoplebeyond the archaeological ruins, beyond the city walls, beyond the water, into a differentpart of Europe, into the European Union. European soldiers, once mobilised to conquerforeign lands, were now policing its outer borders. European institutions becamePage 2 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023preoccupied by the question of whether these new, aspiring, Europeans were the sameas the old successful ones. Did they deserve to come? Did they have valid claims totravel? On what grounds could they settle? Were their values compatible with Europeanones?*Albania and EuropeWhen I am asked if Albania deserves to be in Europe, I think of my walk through Durrësand it makes me smile. It has been hard to keep out of it in the last few thousand years.Both from the good and from the bad. But the question is revealing of the attitude ofthose who pose it, equating the ideals of Europe with the reality of EU institutions,Brussels with universal emancipation, the enlargement process with an obstacle courseset up by Europe’s deserving, successful member states to its (at best) incompetent (atworst) corrupt aspiring counterparts.In October 2022, after an official visit to Tirana following the opening of accessionnegotiations, Albanians were relieved to hear EU commissioner Ursula von der Leyendeclare during a press conference: “Albania has done its homework”. There you have it,all the struggles of the EU and all the torment of the enlargement process in onemetaphor.There is the simplest formulation of a distorted relation: the relation not between equalsbut of the student to the teacher, of those who have wisdom to impart over those whohave lessons to learn, of sticks and carrots, of sanctions and rewards. Can one really“teach” freedom and democracy? And are these the kinds of lessons that current EUstates are best placed to impart?At least candidate countries have homework to do. What about the EU? Its values arewell-known: human rights, human dignity, rule of law, equality, freedom, democracy,respect for minorities. They are so passionately taught to candidate states, and soeagerly endorsed in pre-accession leaders’ speeches, they would turn into a believereven the most unyielding of cynics. The reality is more complicated.One cannot lecture on human rights whilst withdrawing funding for humanitarian projects(as Italy has recently demanded). One cannot preach human dignity while letting peopledrown in the Mediterranean. One cannot praise the rule of law while systematicallyPage 3 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023orchestrating assaults on courts (enter Poland and Hungary).The sad truth is that on all these matters, ideals are very far from reality, and the EUagenda is, if not set, then dragged by the far right. The left, the liberals, the greens, thecentre, simply take comfort in the fact that it is not as all bad as it could be (spoiler: it isas bad as the resistance that it encounters).The image that the EU has traditionally projected on candidate states – principled,confident, purposeful – is the inverse of how it appears from the inside. Scholars used todebate its internal lack of democracy, the issue has now become one of basic survival.But the questions of external enlargement and internal reform are not as separate asthey seem. As right-wing parties win elections in one member state after another, and asleftwing parties increasingly parrot them, the project is shaken to its core. What kind ofEU will emerge from the current crisis? For all we know, it might be one that mirrors theZeitgeist: politically authoritarian, culturally essentialist, exclusionary to the point ofcruelty.The EU’s survivalWhat, under these circumstances, is the point of discussing enlargement as if we were inan era of normal politics? What is the purpose of business as usual: keeping todeadlines, comparing the cases of Ukraine and the Western Balkans, establishingtargets and enforcing priorities? The EU has never before looked more helpless. Surely,the focus should be not on what it can teach to expand, but on how it can learn tosurvive.But that requires a new approach to the process of both enlargement and integration:examining them as not two problems but one. It requires interacting with candidatecountries not as subordinates but as partners, not as passive subjects but as equalagents.For decades now, the enlargement process has, yes, tried to enhance democracy incandidate states but it has also impoverished it. On the one hand, the prospect of EUintegration kept hope alive both in the EU and outside, it gave citizens a sense ofpurpose, a vision of the future amidst the complete collapse of faith in ideologies. On thePage 4 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023other hand, while the EU encouraged adherence to abstract principles, it reduced thespace for principled exchange.It encouraged the rule of law, but it distracted from structural critiques. If social ills arenow all blamed on the “corruption” of domestic elites (as if it were only outside the EUthat corruption could be found), it is in no small part due to the hegemony of the EU’senlargement discourse. The implication was that there are no bad rules, only badpeople. The result is that people in the region can only contemplate politicians (allpoliticians) as thieves.Of course, something like that is now also the case in the EU. That simply illustrates howmuch the times have changed. The process of outward enlargement cannot remainimmune to what happens on the inside. Those who resist the current EU, who are luredby the right, do not resist it because it is too woke, or too cosmopolitan. Very simply, andvery reasonably I should add, they resist it because it fails to represent them.It is this representative gap that is filled by the far right, turning it into an either/orquestion: either “you” or “them”, either “Europe” or the “state”, either the “migrant” or the“white worker”. The problem of the EU is not that it is transnational but that it is nottransnational enough, that it is transnational only for the elite. The notion that we are allequal in making the laws we are required to obey (or the EU regulations we comply with)is so plainly false in a world of structural economic and political divides, that it is bothsurprising and unfortunate that it has become a rallying cry only for the right.Democratic reformIn Plato’s Republic, democracy is likened to a constitutional bazaar. People possess somuch freedom that they can choose any form of rule as the foundation of the politicalcommunity: rule by the people (democracy), rule by the rich (oligarchy), rule by the best(aristocracy) and, when democracy deteriorates, rule by tyrants.Plato, as is well known, was not a democrat, his remarks were intended as a warning.But there is something to his criticism that makes one think about the EU, another sort ofconstitutional bazaar. The European Parliament resembles rule by the people, theEuropean Central Bank echoes rule by the rich, the Commission and the EuropeanCourt of Justice represent rule by the best (or the experts) and the Council combinesPage 5 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023elements of all these.This blend of elements makes the agenda for transforming the EU particularlychallenging. In the case of nation-states, the nominal presence of sovereignty is whatgives the illusion of popular control: politics becomes once more the space of freedom.The institutions of the EU have only policy to go by. And so, good policy ideas keepfloating around: a European Green Deal, a common European migration policy, and(when things go well) a progressive taxation scheme. But as we have recently seen,good policies are threatened by bad politics.The EU has never before been more vulnerable to the fluctuating politics of its memberstates (Brexit was only a first warning sign). This is why coming up with good policies –including policies on enlargement – can no longer be enough. Good policies do notdefend themselves: they also require human agency. Genuine change in the EU requiresdeveloping a pan-European movement that advocates for properly inclusive, radicallyegalitarian policies, a set of rules and institutions that practice the freedom and equalitythey preach.The problem of the external expansion of the EU cannot be separated from that of itsinternal reform. But we won’t make progress if we get bogged down in debates on whichcountries will join the EU first, what is the most likely accession date, who will be second,who will come next. What is needed instead, is decisive political action, and the clarity ofsight that characterised its founding fathers: a new economic vision able to transcend thelimits of capitalism, and political institutions capable of giving citizens proper democraticrepresentation. In short, a new transnational economic model combined with a newtransnational political one.Europe is at a decisive turning point. It can either be shaped by the right, which willultimately destroy it from within, or it will have to go on a different walk from the usual,one that prioritises not what it has to teach others but what it must learn for the ideal tosurvive.Europe’s xhiroAt the end of my walk in Durrës, one would reach an area informally known to oldergenerations as the Volga (after the Soviet-inspired name of an old hotel) and to usPage 6 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023children as Rezistenca, or resistance square, after a communist memorial celebratingAlbania’s resistance to the fascist invasion during World War II.The memorial consisted of several ascending concrete steps (often used by children asslides), leading up to a large socialist sculpture of an unidentified soldier. His gaze wasfixed on the Adriatic Sea, and there was something longing, almost melancholic in theexpression of his eyes. But his hands were firmly up, holding a gun pointed towards Italy,on the other side. It was a plastic image of both violence and desire.Yet nobody took any notice. The people of Durrës would walk around the memorial as ifin a procession, absorbed by their daily preoccupations, hardly glancing at it, far lesspausing to observe. This too has something of the EU. An endless procession aroundthe past. A past that is simply a landmark. We never stop, never look up, never think. Itjust lays there like a stone-cold bronze statue, with its most important lessons bothhiding from view and in plain sight.Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – EuropeanPolitics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: EuropeanUnionPage 7 of 7Permalink: undefinedDate originally posted: undefinedDate PDF generated: 01/11/2023

Europe's xhiro - the EU enlargement process

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120602/1/europpblog_2023_10_9_europes_xhiro.pdf

Europe's xhiro - the EU enlargement process

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