By Dan Bilefsky International Herald
Tribune
TUESDAY,
MAY 9, 2006
ROTTERDAM In the center of this
industrial port city of 600,000 people, a haunting World War II memorial shows a
tortured figure - missing a heart - looking up in despair as German bombs rain
down on Rotterdam.
But on a recent day, passers-by had little time for a war of long ago. Instead, several gathered at a nearby statue of Pim Fortuyn, the slain anti-immigrant leader, whose tirades against Muslim immigration and European Union expansion galvanized the Dutch until he was assassinated just days before a general election here in May 2002.
Looking reverently at the statue, Ronald Sorenson, leader of Fortuyn's Livable Rotterdam party, said the EU's founding rationale - preventing another war on the Continent - no longer resonates with most Dutch people.
He takes such a dim view of the expanded EU, he says, that he wants to resurrect an Iron Curtain that other European leaders spent decades trying to tear down.
"The EU is big enough as it is," Sorenson said, "and we must erect a new economic wall to keep Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey from infiltrating."
Like Fortuyn, Sorenson, a former history teacher, fears that an expanding EU risks transforming the Netherlands into a minor province beside France, Germany and Britain. "After 1989," when the Berlin Wall fell, he said, "the idea that we need the EU to protect us from war on the Continent is absurd."
Wearing orange, the national color of Holland, Sorenson may look and sound like a populist provocateur - and in many ways he is. But until recently his party led Rotterdam's City Council, and it now holds the second- highest number of seats.
Nearly a year after the Dutch resoundingly rejected the EU's new constitution, with 62 percent voting no, Sorenson's antipathy for the EU's enlargement plans is part of a wider expansion fatigue gripping the Continent - a trend in the spotlight as the European Commission prepares to decide whether Bulgaria and Romania are ready to join the Union on Jan. 1.
Next week, the commission will publish reports assessing the progress of the two Balkan countries; on Tuesday, in an implicit admission of the difficulties of this expansion, EU sources said the commission might postpone a decision on entry to give the two countries more time to prepare.
Meanwhile, a host of other countries is knocking at the EU's door, including Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Ukraine.
Most Europeans welcomed the EU's eastward expansion in May 2004, among other reasons because it cemented the demise of the Soviet bloc. But two years after the addition of 10 countries, many Europeans complain that the EU is expanding too far, too fast. Indeed, at a time of surging doubts about European identity, enlargement has become the emblem of the remoteness of the Brussels-based EU.
Recent polls show that a slim majority of Europeans still look favorably on the general idea of enlargement. Yet nearly two-thirds say they fear that expansion will fuel problems in European job markets. This ambivalence - most pronounced in France, Austria and Germany - has its roots in several interlocking factors: worries about Europe's stagnating economies; growing hostility to immigration; fears of admitting Muslim Turkey further down the road; and concerns that current EU members will be drowned out by too many voices.
EU leaders warn that a backlash against expansion risks depriving the Union of its greatest foreign policy tool in the post-Cold War world and its best alternative to American military might: the offer of EU membership.
"It would be utterly irresponsible to wobble in our commitments and disrupt a valuable process which is helping to build stable and effective partners in the most unstable parts of Europe," said Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner in charge of expansion.
The prospect of joining the EU has inspired Turkey to press ahead with difficult economic and political reforms, motivated Romania and Bulgaria to tackle corruption, and accelerated the arrest of war criminals in Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro.
But there are many doubters.
Rotterdam - the second biggest city in the Netherlands, an EU founding country renowned for its liberal outlook and openness - is an unlikely epicenter for Euroskepticism. Dominated by Europe's biggest port, a massive complex of piers and warehouses that stretches for 48 kilometers, or 30 miles, this no-nonsense working-class city has been a center for trade since the height of the Dutch empire in the 17th century.
But today the modernist architecture that sprouted after the center of Rotterdam was bombed to the ground in 1940 is becoming overshadowed by dilapidated immigrant neighborhoods. Locals say that a fear of immigration is making them question further expansion of the EU's borders. Nationwide, according to a December Eurobarometer poll, more than half the Dutch want their leaders to slam on the brakes.
One such dissenter is Jules Deelders, one of the Netherland's leading poets. Known as Rotterdam's "mayor of the night" because of his influence on late- night culture, Deelders, 61, says he opposes further enlargement because he does not want to have to foot the bill for poor Balkan countries, which he says share neither Holland's tolerant attitude toward drugs and euthanasia, nor its cultural outlook.
He laments that the Dutch are already the biggest per capita contributors to the EU. In 2004, each Dutch person contributed €194, according to the Dutch Finance Ministry, nearly four times the amount paid by each French citizen, and 14 times that paid by Finns.
"We Dutch are quiet rebels, but we voted no to the constitution because we wanted to sabotage the whole process of integration," said Deelders, peering from behind mirrored sunglasses in a neighborhood pub surrounded by hashish bars. "It happens and it happens, and no one ever asks us what we think."
Across town at an imposing Turkish mosque, whose minarets tower over a mixed neighborhood of halal butchers and factories called Oude Westen, or Old West, a group of young Muslims has another explanation for the latest expansion fears.
Mimoun Kasmi, 37, a Dutch social worker from Morocco, says that hardening attitudes toward Muslims - evidenced by new policies requiring newcomers to earn 20 percent more than the minimum wage of €8.78, or $11.20, an hour in order to get residency permits - have helped fan the backlash.
In Rotterdam, nearly half the population was born outside of the Netherlands. Yet Kasmi, who came when he was 21, says he is against the EU's admitting Bulgaria and Romania because he fears that low-wage workers from the East could deprive him and other immigrants of their hard-won jobs.
"Poles have already come here and live eight in a house and are willing to get paid €3 an hour," he said. "How can we compete with that?"
Concern that EU expansion will create unfair competition is fanning skepticism here. The spokesman at Rotterdam's port, Tie Schellekens, says he supports EU expansion because it will expand trade. But he warns that enlargement also could bring risks since the EU is subsidizing low-cost rival ports in underdeveloped regions, in the Baltics for example, that try to undercut Rotterdam.
"The EU should not try to stimulate business in deserts," he said.
He is not the only EU advocate to show reservations. At Rotterdam's celebrated Erasmus University, Sander Lutwieler, 27, spends his days hunched over European Commission reports for a doctoral thesis he is writing on Holland's influence in the Union.
Lutwieler says he voted no in last year's referendum on the constitution because he fears the EU has become an elitest club that ignores its citizens. He says he tried to read the EU's arcane 66,000-word constitution, but could barely get through it.
"For decades there was a permissive consensus that the EU was good," he said. "But the EU must explain itself better to the masses before expanding further. They are not stupid and will no longer accept business as usual."
But on a recent day, passers-by had little time for a war of long ago. Instead, several gathered at a nearby statue of Pim Fortuyn, the slain anti-immigrant leader, whose tirades against Muslim immigration and European Union expansion galvanized the Dutch until he was assassinated just days before a general election here in May 2002.
Looking reverently at the statue, Ronald Sorenson, leader of Fortuyn's Livable Rotterdam party, said the EU's founding rationale - preventing another war on the Continent - no longer resonates with most Dutch people.
He takes such a dim view of the expanded EU, he says, that he wants to resurrect an Iron Curtain that other European leaders spent decades trying to tear down.
"The EU is big enough as it is," Sorenson said, "and we must erect a new economic wall to keep Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey from infiltrating."
Like Fortuyn, Sorenson, a former history teacher, fears that an expanding EU risks transforming the Netherlands into a minor province beside France, Germany and Britain. "After 1989," when the Berlin Wall fell, he said, "the idea that we need the EU to protect us from war on the Continent is absurd."
Wearing orange, the national color of Holland, Sorenson may look and sound like a populist provocateur - and in many ways he is. But until recently his party led Rotterdam's City Council, and it now holds the second- highest number of seats.
Nearly a year after the Dutch resoundingly rejected the EU's new constitution, with 62 percent voting no, Sorenson's antipathy for the EU's enlargement plans is part of a wider expansion fatigue gripping the Continent - a trend in the spotlight as the European Commission prepares to decide whether Bulgaria and Romania are ready to join the Union on Jan. 1.
Next week, the commission will publish reports assessing the progress of the two Balkan countries; on Tuesday, in an implicit admission of the difficulties of this expansion, EU sources said the commission might postpone a decision on entry to give the two countries more time to prepare.
Meanwhile, a host of other countries is knocking at the EU's door, including Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Ukraine.
Most Europeans welcomed the EU's eastward expansion in May 2004, among other reasons because it cemented the demise of the Soviet bloc. But two years after the addition of 10 countries, many Europeans complain that the EU is expanding too far, too fast. Indeed, at a time of surging doubts about European identity, enlargement has become the emblem of the remoteness of the Brussels-based EU.
Recent polls show that a slim majority of Europeans still look favorably on the general idea of enlargement. Yet nearly two-thirds say they fear that expansion will fuel problems in European job markets. This ambivalence - most pronounced in France, Austria and Germany - has its roots in several interlocking factors: worries about Europe's stagnating economies; growing hostility to immigration; fears of admitting Muslim Turkey further down the road; and concerns that current EU members will be drowned out by too many voices.
EU leaders warn that a backlash against expansion risks depriving the Union of its greatest foreign policy tool in the post-Cold War world and its best alternative to American military might: the offer of EU membership.
"It would be utterly irresponsible to wobble in our commitments and disrupt a valuable process which is helping to build stable and effective partners in the most unstable parts of Europe," said Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner in charge of expansion.
The prospect of joining the EU has inspired Turkey to press ahead with difficult economic and political reforms, motivated Romania and Bulgaria to tackle corruption, and accelerated the arrest of war criminals in Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro.
But there are many doubters.
Rotterdam - the second biggest city in the Netherlands, an EU founding country renowned for its liberal outlook and openness - is an unlikely epicenter for Euroskepticism. Dominated by Europe's biggest port, a massive complex of piers and warehouses that stretches for 48 kilometers, or 30 miles, this no-nonsense working-class city has been a center for trade since the height of the Dutch empire in the 17th century.
But today the modernist architecture that sprouted after the center of Rotterdam was bombed to the ground in 1940 is becoming overshadowed by dilapidated immigrant neighborhoods. Locals say that a fear of immigration is making them question further expansion of the EU's borders. Nationwide, according to a December Eurobarometer poll, more than half the Dutch want their leaders to slam on the brakes.
One such dissenter is Jules Deelders, one of the Netherland's leading poets. Known as Rotterdam's "mayor of the night" because of his influence on late- night culture, Deelders, 61, says he opposes further enlargement because he does not want to have to foot the bill for poor Balkan countries, which he says share neither Holland's tolerant attitude toward drugs and euthanasia, nor its cultural outlook.
He laments that the Dutch are already the biggest per capita contributors to the EU. In 2004, each Dutch person contributed €194, according to the Dutch Finance Ministry, nearly four times the amount paid by each French citizen, and 14 times that paid by Finns.
"We Dutch are quiet rebels, but we voted no to the constitution because we wanted to sabotage the whole process of integration," said Deelders, peering from behind mirrored sunglasses in a neighborhood pub surrounded by hashish bars. "It happens and it happens, and no one ever asks us what we think."
Across town at an imposing Turkish mosque, whose minarets tower over a mixed neighborhood of halal butchers and factories called Oude Westen, or Old West, a group of young Muslims has another explanation for the latest expansion fears.
Mimoun Kasmi, 37, a Dutch social worker from Morocco, says that hardening attitudes toward Muslims - evidenced by new policies requiring newcomers to earn 20 percent more than the minimum wage of €8.78, or $11.20, an hour in order to get residency permits - have helped fan the backlash.
In Rotterdam, nearly half the population was born outside of the Netherlands. Yet Kasmi, who came when he was 21, says he is against the EU's admitting Bulgaria and Romania because he fears that low-wage workers from the East could deprive him and other immigrants of their hard-won jobs.
"Poles have already come here and live eight in a house and are willing to get paid €3 an hour," he said. "How can we compete with that?"
Concern that EU expansion will create unfair competition is fanning skepticism here. The spokesman at Rotterdam's port, Tie Schellekens, says he supports EU expansion because it will expand trade. But he warns that enlargement also could bring risks since the EU is subsidizing low-cost rival ports in underdeveloped regions, in the Baltics for example, that try to undercut Rotterdam.
"The EU should not try to stimulate business in deserts," he said.
He is not the only EU advocate to show reservations. At Rotterdam's celebrated Erasmus University, Sander Lutwieler, 27, spends his days hunched over European Commission reports for a doctoral thesis he is writing on Holland's influence in the Union.
Lutwieler says he voted no in last year's referendum on the constitution because he fears the EU has become an elitest club that ignores its citizens. He says he tried to read the EU's arcane 66,000-word constitution, but could barely get through it.
"For decades there was a permissive consensus that the EU was good," he said. "But the EU must explain itself better to the masses before expanding further. They are not stupid and will no longer accept business as usual."
Copyright © 2006 the International Herald
Tribune
----------------------------
Vali
An aristocratic title is not enough to ensure a noble behaviour. A person's greatness comes from acknowledging the mistakes and agreeing to correct them.
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." (Jimi Hendrix)
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