Priorities in negotiating Romania's accession to the European Union: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / January

Priorities in negotiating Romania's accession to the European Union

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Dr. Genoveva-Elena Perju

Iaşi, 2005

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION................................................. .................................................. ..........4

HEAD. 1

NEGOTIATIONS AND FACTORS OF FUNDAMENTALS AND EVALUATION OF RESULTS ......................................... .................................................. ............... 9

1.1 Accession criteria ............................................... .................................................. 10

1.2 Domestic and international circumstances ............................................. ...................... 27

1.3 Qualities and experience of the negotiator ............................................. ...................... 38

1.4 A model for substantiating and evaluating the results of the negotiations ................... 40

CAP.2

COMPONENTS AND DIFFICULTIES OF ROMANIA'S INTEGRATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION ....................................... ......................... 48

2.1 Negotiating Components .............................................. ........................................ 48

2.2 Romania between convergences and divergences ............................................ .................. 73

2.3 Difficulties in negotiation .............................................. .............................................. 92

HEAD. 3

PRIORITIES IN THE NEGOTIATIONS OF ACCESSION OF ROMANIA TO THE EUROPEAN UNION ........................................ .................................................. .................... 128

3.1 Negotiating priorities ............................................... ............................................. 128

3.2 Analysis of risk factors ............................................. ......................................... 130

3.3 Government solutions ............................................... ......................................... 181

3.4 Results of the accession negotiations ............................................ ...................... 188

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HEAD. 4

FUNDAMENTAL MODEL AND EVALUATION OF THE RESULTS OF THE NEGOTIATIONS OF THE ACCESSION OF ROMANIA TO THE EUROPEAN UNION ................................... .................................................. ......................... 192

4.1. The starting methodological basis ............................................... ............................... 192

4.2 Negotiation model ............................................... ............................................... 198

4.3 Utilitarian-pragmatic aspects ............................................. ................................. 212

CHAPTER 5

SIMULATIONS FOR NEGOTIATION OF WINE QUOTAS OF ROMANIA - A REPRESENTATIVE PRODUCT ON THE MARKET OF THE EUROPEAN UNION ....................... 215

4.1 Calculation and exemplification items ........................................... ........................ 215

4.2 Numerical Simulations ............................................... .................................................. 220

4.3 Priorities for accession negotiations ............................................ .................. 224

CONCLUSIONS ................................................. .................................................. ............ 228

BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................. .................................................. ...... 231

ANNEXES................................................. .................................................. ...................... 242

FOREWORD

The negotiations of Romania's accession to the European Union are a topical event and of maximum interest for the economy but especially for the Romanian society.

The accession negotiations are over, but the commitments made by them still create difficulties for implementation. They are so many and create so many difficulties for the Romanian economy that the results of the negotiation process will have implications over very long horizons. The implications, however, are not one-of-a-kind, and despite Romania's difficulties and slow progress towards accession, the beneficial effects and synergistic links they will create are too important to leave us discouraged.

However, the beneficial effects of applying the negotiation results are not the purpose of this paper. In the negotiations, what is most obvious and at the same time a priority for their completion and application of the results are the difficulties and the way they are managed under the conditions existing in the Romanian economy.

The present paper starts, in identifying the priorities and their analysis, from a general framework of the accession negotiations, by scoring and analyzing some of their determinants: the integration criteria, the internal and international negotiation framework and the qualities of those involved in the negotiations.

The internal and international framework, the events that take place in the economies and societies of the candidate countries, of the European Union and worldwide, sometimes decisively influence the beginning of the accession negotiations, the continuation and the speed with which is finally and finally the conclusion and accession. An exhaustive hierarchy of events in the order of the influences exerted seems to indicate that the events that take place on the world stage in particular influence the beginning of the negotiations. The fall of the military regimes in Greece, Spain and Portugal led to the beginning of the accession negotiations with these countries, and the fall of the communist regimes led to the beginning of negotiations with the Central Eastern European Countries.

The accession criteria, more precisely the way they are fulfilled by the candidate countries, determine the progress and the pace of the accession negotiations. On this level, the difficulties of the accession negotiations generated by the difficulties of fulfilling the imposed criteria appear.

And finally, the conclusion of the negotiations that, experience has shown us, that it is carried out under conditions of partial fulfillment of the integration criteria. In these conditions, in presenting the internal situation and the negotiation position, the quality and experience of the negotiator are important, which can bring a positive light on the accession negotiations and favor their conclusion.

The completion of the negotiations is greatly favored, even in the conditions of insufficient preparation, by the internal political pressures.

Therefore, the integration criteria are the ones that determine the priorities in the negotiation, and establishing and creating the application framework, especially the priorities, can speed up the conclusion of the negotiations and finally the integration.

The difficulties of the negotiations generated by the need to apply the integration criteria were of different natures along the successive enlargements of the European Union. First of all, at the first enlargements, the integration criteria were not clearly defined, the integration was especially commercial in nature, which was also reflected in the accession negotiations.

Until the accession negotiations with the Central Eastern European Countries, from the group to which Romania belongs, the objectives of the European Union have evolved with them, as well as the integration criteria and the negotiation difficulties.

The way in which the integration criteria have evolved is captured in the successive Treaties establishing the European Union and we present them in the second section of this paper.

The difficulties and, implicitly the priorities of the accession negotiations of Romania, result from the follow-up of the negotiation structure and components.

The objective of a hierarchy in the accession negotiations of Romania is a heavy task, within the complex framework of the accession negotiations. The negotiation components cover all aspects of the society of a candidate country: economic, social and political.

In the third chapter, we consider that having a special importance for Romania's accession negotiations, the fulfillment of the economic criterion for the existence of a functional market economy, and the analysis of the negotiation components that cover this criterion leads us to identify the main difficulties of negotiating Romania. .

The identification of the difficulties is the result of a process of confronting the failures and successes achieved by Romania, along the path taken towards integration and confirmed by the Evaluation Reports of the European Commission.

In chapter 4, we have in the foreground, what we consider to be Romania's priorities in the negotiation of accession to the European Union and we follow the winding road of the necessity to fulfill the economic objectives that result from the established priorities, together with the interdependencies that they imply.

Finally, we propose an economic model in which at least part of the specified elements are interposed, which are the object of negotiation of one of Romania's economic priorities - the negotiation of commercial quotas, in particular those of the wine sector. It is a partial equilibrium model that allows calculating the optimum of the trading quotas that can be obtained in trade negotiations between Romania and the EU. It was realized with the support of the European Commission funding, within a research grant in Germany and was the starting point and the subject of the whole research.

I owe a debt, to thank, and in this way, the coordinators, Prof. Jürgen von Hagen and Prof. Vasile C. Nechita as well as Dr. Jeniffer Wu Pedussel, Dr. Christian Volpe Martinicus and the other participants in the seminars of the European Studies Center in Bonn and I hope that the paper will be a useful support for all those interested in what the negotiations were. accession and the consequences of their results for the economies of the candidate countries and of Romania in particular.

HEAD. 1

NEGOTIATIONS AND FACTORS OF FUNDAMENTALS AND EVALUATION OF RESULTS

The accession negotiations of the candidate countries to the EU do not fit into the classic nature of any negotiations, in which the participants start by having well-defined but contradictory positions and end up with a compromise result, a mix of the interests of the two parties.

EU accession negotiations differ from the classical ones by two major aspects:

- conditioning the admission to negotiations;

- fixed negotiation framework.

First of all, the Union conditions the beginning of the accession negotiations by fulfilling some criteria for admission as a member. And secondly, the negotiation framework is fixed, not negotiated and represented by the acquis communautaire. What is actually negotiated is the methodology of applying the acquis (the object of the negotiations). By the application methodology we mean:

- aspects of the acquis on which transitional periods and derogations are granted;

- the length of time for which transitional periods and derogations are granted;

- the need to improve the acquis to take into account other aspects specific to the candidate countries.

The beginning of the accession negotiations with the Central Eastern European Countries (TCEE) was made in the conditions of non-fulfillment by some of the candidate countries of the conditionalities of admission to negotiations represented by the accession criteria. Under these conditions we can consider that the determinants of starting the negotiations are different. From the analysis of the previous enlargements we notice the influence exerted by: the domestic and international conjuncture and the quality and experience of the negotiators.

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1. 1 The accession criteria

The accession negotiations started in 1961 by receiving the first request for accession from the United Kingdom and continued in the following period by opening negotiations with Denmark, Ireland and Norway and again the United Kingdom (following the rejection of the first request) in 1967, followed by by the opening of accession negotiations with Greece in 1976, Portugal in 1978 and Spain in 1979. It is a first period of successive accession requests and the opening of negotiations, followed by a second one, which began in 1993, through the opening of accession negotiations. with the EFTA Countries (Austria, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Switzerland) and the Central East - European Countries in 1997 (Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Slovakia) and 1999 (Romania and Bulgaria) respectively .

At the beginning of the negotiations, the accession criteria were not applied as they are required to be respected in the current enlargements. For the first group that applied for membership, the lack of these criteria is easily justified. Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom were countries with a high level of development, comparable to those of the countries that formed the European Community.

In addition, the integration of Great Britain was a strategic objective of the Community, given that it was a country with an international historical, economic and political position. By its financial position, the United Kingdom was an important supporter of the Community budget, which is why it also attracted dissatisfaction and re-negotiation of its contribution in 1974-1975.

The accession requests of Ireland and Denmark have been closely linked to that of the UK as a result of their economic ties, so that the Ireland did not count so much in the accession negotiations as opposed to the importance of UK integration and the connection between these two accession requests.

The central role of the UK has also been demonstrated in the accession requests and the negotiations of Spain and Portugal. Although these countries were under military regimes, the Community developed a great deal of cooperation with them. As a result of the development of the economic and political ties with England, the accession negotiations with the UK were decided and realized. The negotiations with Greece, Spain and Portugal represented the first experience of negotiating the Community with a group of countries with a lower level of development. In these conditions and under the pressure of the need to be involved in ensuring stability in the Mediterranean area, the Community did not have the time and experience necessary to establish accession criteria for these countries.

At the same time, the world economic and political domination of the US and USSR and the strained relations between them required a reaction from the European countries. The role of European countries had greatly diminished internationally following the two world wars, and to the difficulties of economic and social reconstruction were added those caused by the strong political instability in Europe.

The decision to cooperate between the main pillars of Europe (France and Germany) was therefore a reaction to the world political situation and at the same time the internal one. The formation of the European Community by Germany and France was expected to eliminate territorial or material disputes between the two countries (as in the case of the Rhine-Ruhr basin) and at the same time it was intended to represent a counterweight to the economic development of the two world superpowers, the USA. and the USSR. By opening accession negotiations with countries such as the Mediterranean, the Community was also placed in a position to play a role of political stabilization factor. Mediterranean countries were countries where democracy was newly established and lack of community support threatened to increase instability in their democratic functioning. In these circumstances, the requirement of political criteria was premature, difficult to meet by candidate and discouraging countries for the prospect of accession.

The successes achieved by the Community in the field of economic integration have been encouraging and the Community objectives have been expanded to include other aspects besides the economic ones such as social or political ones.

The negotiations with the first group focused on specific problems caused by the difficulties of achieving commercial and agricultural integration or accepting the political and monetary commitments of the EU. When receiving the accession requests from the UK and the countries that were part of the same group, the internal framework for the creation of the European Community was not clearly defined, registering itself in many desires and objectives to be achieved such as: creation of own budgetary resources, implementation of the CAP , EMU implementation, Common Foreign Policy. Under these conditions, the criteria that these countries had to meet were less rigorous, many of the difficult problems of the negotiations being postponed until after the integration.

European integration continued to rush towards multidimensionalism, considering aspects other than economic ones, such as monetary and political ones, and the integration of the TEEF meant first and foremost the integration of former communist countries, with very different levels of development, totally unprepared for functioning within some structures of the European type.

The success achieved in the political stabilization and the integration of the Mediterranean countries opened a new path of the communitarian objectives, by including some political objectives, and the fall of the communist regimes in the Central Eastern European countries forced the solidarity and prompt reaction.

The European Union itself was faced with numerous problems resulting from the integration process and did not want to complicate them by enlargement. That is why it defines and adopts an integration strategy by the accession criteria.

In Maastricht (1992) the economic and political criteria of integration were laid down by explicit request from the candidate states to ensure the functioning of the economy on democratic principles.

The Copenhagen criteria (1993) were established prior to receiving TCEE accession requests in order to anticipate the candidacies of these countries and were established and adapted to the conditions of their own economies.

There are four economic and political criteria and they refer to:

1. the existence of a democracy and the observance of human rights and the protection of the rights of minorities;

2. the existence of a functioning market economy;

3. the ability to cope with EU competitive pressures;

4. the ability to assume the obligations of membership (implementation of the community acquis;

The political criteria

The first criterion related to the existence of a democracy, the observance of human rights and the protection of the rights of minorities involve elements related to the reform of the public administration, the judicial system, the fight against corruption, the protection of the child, the human rights and the protection of minorities. Its appearance was determined by the concerns raised by some candidate states regarding the treatment of minorities. Therefore, it was considered that a clear clarification within the criteria helps to achieve the reform in this area - criterion 1 from Copenhagen (Mayhew, 1998).

The Union aims to fulfill the criterion by evaluating two components:

1. Democracy and the rule of law;

2. Human rights and the protection of minorities.[1]

This political criterion from Copenhagen (1993) was supplemented by the decisions of the Madrid European Council (1995) with the inclusion of the need to create the conditions of integration by adopting administrative structures and applying and transposing Community law into national laws, into their own administrative and legal structures. The new difficulties encountered in implementation were signaled by the Luxembourg European Council (1997), specifying the need to strengthen and improve the functioning of the institutions in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam.

At present, the Union is evaluating the existence of democracy and the rule of law by pursuing:

- the composition of the Parliament;

- the composition of the Executive;

- the structure of the judicial system;

- anti-corruption measures.

Democracy and the rights of minorities are considered to be respected when the candidate states respect the Civil and political rights and the Rights and protection of minorities.

The political criteria were decided by the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), which established as fundamental principles of the Union the integration of states whose governments respect the principles of democracy.

The conclusions of the Copenhagen European Council (1993) specifically established the composition of the political requirements that condition accession to the Union: stable institutions that guarantee democracy, the priority of the law, human rights, respect for minorities and their protection.

The political demands gained consistency through the subsequent summits of the Union. The conclusions of the European Council of Madrid (1995) complemented the political requirements of integration with the following aspects: each candidate state was asked to create the conditions of integration by adapting its administrative structures and the Community legislation required to be transposed into national laws and applied effectively through the structures. administrative and legal own.

From the experience of the previous enlargements but also under the influence of receiving accession requests from states that had very different political structures and which had problems in restructuring their own societies for the application of the principle of democracy, the fundamental principles of the Union included in the Treaty of Amsterdam were born ( 1997) and which outline the political criteria for negotiating EU accession: the principle of freedom, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.

By the conclusions of the Luxembourg European Council (1997), the Union called for a strengthening and improvement of the functioning of the institutions, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam.

Accession was conditional on compliance with all the criteria set in Copenhagen, but the political criterion gained even greater value following the Helsinki European Council (1999) in that it was determined that the accession negotiations were open and that it was respected. Within the same Council, the accession candidate countries were asked