My intervention at 49th COSAC conference
49th COSAC Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the EU, Dublin 23-25 June 2013.
Intervention by Atis Lejiņš in debate on EU enlargement and neighborhood policy.
Enlargement is taking place in a dramatically changing world where weare reminded every day of the emerging new geopolitics.
This means:
1. That even big states in the EU are small compared to China, India, and perhaps, further down the line, Brazil. We will need to hang together, or we will each hang separately. Hence it would be agreat mistake for Great Britain to leave the EU, i.e. de-enlarge the EU and thereby diminish also herself.
2. We continue to struggle with the concept of „empire overstretch”. Though the EU is not an empire, we do have to be honest with ourselves and work with this concept – we cannot ignore it! At the same time keeping in mind the eventual inclusion of the remaining Balkans into the European Union.
The Inclusion of remaining Blakans while will be advantageous to them, but asa for the present members, the fruits will be ripe only for countries like, Germany, Sweden, Poland etc, who have sound investment capabilities, and seeks to expand their market base.
The EU as represented by the Political and economic heavy weights, will to a greater extent encircle Russia in their political targets,
How will it help Latvia ?
In the Latvian context, the inclusion of Balkans will assume greater competition to the economics of Latvia. The even chepaer labour of those other Balkans, and thier Russian speaking cheaper labour force will take away the employment opportunities of Latvians. Their chepaer products will flood the Latvian domestic markets.
Kartik Umakant Desai