The Dangers of Enlargement - Are we ready? Are they?
It was finally confirmed this week that Romania and Bulgaria will become part of the EU in January. This has been a hot topic for some time in the European Parliament. Romania and Bulgaria's accession has been highly controversial coming so soon after the enlargement of 2004. This time it's only 2 countries rather than 10 but these ones are much poorer and bigger than places like the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
It is a big issue for our area. Of the migrants who came to Britain since 2004 more came to the Anglia region than anywhere else in the UK, including London. There is evidence that these immigrants have benefited our economy but it is also true that this happened without anyone asking people in East Anglia what they thought about it and whether there should be more of it and how it should work.
The fact is the Government have no idea what's going on when it comes to the effects of new countries becoming EU Member States. In 2004 the Home Office predicted there would be 15,000 people a year from the new EU member countries moving to the UK for work. Guess how many have actually come? Best estimates are around 600,000 with 15%, or 90,000, in Anglia! That means 3 times more people have moved to our region than were expected to move to the whole of the UK. If the Government were bookies they'd have gone broke long ago as they're clearly useless at making an educated guess of what's going to happen in the future.
The problem is whenever Conservatives talk about immigration we get accused of being racist. This is a good way to divert attention from Governmental incompetence but it's not much of a policy to say anyone who disagrees with you is racist. People are different and failure to recognise this won't create the harmonious multi-cultural society Tony Blair talks about but has no idea how to create.
This was brought home to me by an email sent round the European Parliament. A Bulgarian Parliamentary observer, decided to send an email about the fact that you can buy gypsy girls in Bulgaria and that most of them are much skinnier than a Roma MEP he was writing about. He went on to make further tasteless and racist comments about Roma people and was rightly condemned by MEPs for his unacceptable comments.
The Bulgarian observer defended himself by saying he was expressing his right to freedom of speech. From what I can gather this Bulgarian and his political party are not particularly nice people and I totally reject his racist views. What I think is interesting is how what is acceptable in Bulgaria is not necessarily OK in the European Parliament. 17 years ago Bulgaria and Romania were communist countries cut off from the outside world. In January they are meant to become full members of the EU with our values on human rights and equality. It is good that we use the attraction of EU membership to stamp out racism and oppression but shouldn't this happen before they are let in to the EU rather than afterwards? The same questions are being asked about whether Turkey should join the EU.
Issues around migration and Roma minorities are complicated and controversial. However, as long as the only discussions about them are in Parliaments the difficulties faced by communities won't be overcome.
