Sometimes the electorate is a bit slow. They're not very bright, you see, and thus they end up doing silly things now and then, such as the Irish voting against the Nice treaty. Fortunately, we have the wise and steady guidance of the political elites to see us through such errors. It was an error of course. A momentary lapse of reason that has now thankfully been corrected. The Irish electorate, sternly spoken to and dutifully admonished, has produced the Elitically Correct (eliticiously? elitely?) result by ratifying the Nice treaty. The grand project of European expansion can continue, much to the relief of the euro-patrician guild everywhere.

The overriding imperative of further EU expansion thus steamrollers over local opposition. The outgoing Dutch government has now also dropped its opposition to enlargement, meaning that the way is clear for the newly liberated countries of central and eastern Europe to join the EU club. It is far from clear that this is really a good thing, either for the EU or the applicant countries themselves. I am surprised that I am even writing this, for a decade ago accession to EU would have been a no-brainer for me. Binding the countries so ravaged by communist tyranny to the democratic institutions and community of the EU was an obviously good thing. Yet things have changed since then, both in the EU and in the applicant countries themselves. The Soviet Union is but a nightmarish memory, and Russia's expansionism is contained for now, and might even be channeled constructively (but that's a blog item in itself). The economies of the east have done reasonably well outside the EU, although they still have not really sufficiently advanced to "developed market" status.

The EU itself is like an old, collapsing star. The gravity of the star keeps pulling mass ever inward, now that the fusion reactions of hydrogen and helium have exhausted themselves. The energy is gone, spent. With the gravitational contraction still ongoing, will the EU become a black hole, sucking everything into it without chance for escape? The bureaucracy and the institutional self-preservation it breeds is reaching critical levels. The interference from Brussels is becoming ever larger, without even the semblance of a commensurate increase in democratic legitimacy or accountability. What once was a good idea (European intergration through free trade), has now morphed into an ominous threat to self-determination, civil liberties and economic dynamism. The countries of central and eastern Europe might well be better off staying outside of the EU. In order to be allowed to join, the countries must agree to implement the basic set of EU laws, known as the acquis communautaire which runs to tens of thousands of pages. This will shackle their economies with the same kind of stifling regulatory environment that has sapped the strength of many prosperous west European countries. The countries of the east don't have the momentum that the established wealth of the west provides to keep them going. They need to keep growing, not just muddling along.

For the existing member states of the EU, there is also a danger from enlargement. Having too disparate a group will impose further strains and dilute the effectiveness of the group as a whole. The admission of Greece to the EU is in retrospect not the best of moves. We're stuck with the banana republic in the south, and some of the next wave entrants have the risk that they might join the ranks of Greece.

But there are also positive aspects to enlargement. By diluting the existing base of countries, the Franco-German axis will be of less importance, especially since the French in the past have been the dominant partner in the axis. The Germans were (and still are to some extent) fearful of asserting themselves after the second world war (and rightly so), which the French used to get Germany to back their plans for the EU, which in most cases were extensions of French national interest. But the synergistic effects of enlargement can also work to the benefit of both joiners and existing members, by injecting a points of view and new dynamism into the processes of the EU. It will also force the abominable Common Agricultural Policy to be amended, as it would cost too much to extend it east in its current form. I am too much of a cynic by now to hope that it will be actually scrapped.

My main worry is that the EU has become so intrinsically stagnant, that these effects will have not a chance to assert themselves. And giving the blighted countries of the east the chance to rejoin the broader culture and community of Europe is a good thing, even a necessary one. EU membership might help to strengthen the concepts of civil society, democracy and the rule of law. But again, the EU's shortcomings in this regard raise doubts over the effectiveness of such support. I wonder if bilateral ties with western countries might not be more effective.

So I don't know. I really think the countries of the east should be given every opportunity to join the European and global trading systems. They need to take steps to build an institutional memory of democracy and rule of law. The EU would be ideally placed to serve these purposes, but its evolution into the bureaucratic monstrosity that it has become makes this role much harder to fulfill. On balance, I do think enlargement will be positive. Grave doubts continue to simmer.