Attila Ágh

It is crucial for the eventual full EU integration of the East Central European (ECE) countries to involve their parliaments to the European integration process. The ECE parliaments have to play a decisive role in both the pre-accession and accession periods. At the same time, there has been a democratic deficit in the EU, including the European Parliament, which has created new, additional problems for the new entrants. As a comparative summary of the activities of the Second Parliament (1994-98) in Hungary, one has to give an overview of these problems, in order to see not only the present but also the future perspectives of the Hungarian parliament at the beginning of the Third Parliament (1998-2002).

The EU was organized originally in the spirit of "elite democracy", and in general terms, the further European integration was a result of the activity of the national political elites. Till the early nineties, the national executives were prominent in promoting this process, and even the national parliaments played a very secondary role in managing and designing the integration process. Initially, federalists and functionalists believed that the people would back European integration but there was no empirical evidence for large public support of the further integration process. National political and business elites fought their battles without regard for popular opinion. Genuine public involvement developed only in new member states where some parts of the political elite were opposed to the EU membership. The entire integration process may be basically characterized as "popular indifference" and "elite actions" until the eighties (see Slater, 1994: 153, 158). Hence, European integration was not a story of mass movements and legislatures but that of the changing bargains of political elites. The "European project became a matter of party and group politics", an issue for "political entrepreneurship", including the further integration in the nineties, since "1992 has so far been a project of elites" (Sandholtz and Zysman, 1994: 198, 208).1

The political asymmetry of the "EU-building" process in favour of the executive power versus the legislative power was even more explicit because of the lack of popular participation in the decisions about the deepening (Single European Act, 1986 and Maastricht Treaty, 1991). For the first time referenda were held in some countries (Denmark, Ireland and France) concerning the Maastricht Treaty, otherwise the populations of the member states had never been consulted about the Treaty of Rome. Consequently, before Maastricht there had only been an elite managed integration process leading to an "intergovernmental" elite democracy in Brussels, very remotely influenced by the populations of the countries concerned (Sandholtz and Zysman, 1994: 208). The emerging European polity in this respect became very different from the national polities of member states. In the member countries there was a representative democracy, but at the EU level there was some kind of "delegative" democracy (the term has been introduced for Latin America, see O'Donnell, 1994), that is, a democracy with all rights and competences transferred to the Brussels institutions. Not surprisingly, the phenomenon called "democratic deficit" (or, better to say, democracy deficit) has come to the surface again and again with increasing popular dissatisfaction against the "Brussels jungle" or the Eurocrats. This issue has currently risen among the three new entrants and it has been already discussed several times concerning the "Eastern extension" as well.2

The "participatory revolution" in the seventies and afterwards in particular, and the ensuing change in the character of democracy in Western Europe in general, has generated a growing contradiction with the increasing elitist character of the EU, that is, with the overconcentration of power in the hands of the Euro-bureaucracy (or the "Mega-Bureaucracy of Brussels", see Wessels, 1996: 62). This contradiction has led to an intensive reaction by the national parliaments to the EU decisions and to an increasing claim for the scrutiny over these decisions instead of their earlier permissive and submissive attitude (see Norton, ed, 1995, or Andersen and Eliassen, 1996a: 1-7). This development reached a critical point with the Maastricht Treaty and with the post-Maastricht developments. Although some forms of popular participation and control have appeared (referenda in some former member states and in the three new member states before their entry) on one side, but in fact the gap between democratic control and the power concentration in Brussels has grown in the nineties on the other side. Most of the "Euro-literature" has discussed these issues in the terms of the democracy-efficiency paradox (see e.g. Andersen and Eliassen, 1996a: 9 and Wessels, 1996: 59).

The issue of the ECE extension has emerged for the EU at the time of its deepest political crisis along the lines of a democracy deficit problem. It has also been formulated from the functional side, as the impossibility of the normal workings of the EU already within the existing institutions and decision-making structures, that is, even without further extension. This functional, "poli-technical" dimension aggravates the problem of democratic deficit, at the same time this approach hides it, by presenting itself as the only problem. Most of those who advocate structural institutional reforms in the EU would argue for more efficiency by simply transfering more power to Brussels but without increasing the "checks and balances" by other power centres (the European Parliament or the Regions), thus this approach could even enhance the problem of democratic deficit instead of solving it. All in all, the ECE countries seek full membership in the EU at a time when the EU has reached a cumulated crisis of both democratic deficit and functional capacity, and these two sides of crisis mostly reinforce each other, creating a limited extension capacity.

This situation has been clearly formulated by Wolfgang Merkel in his concise study about enlargement versus deepening:

"However, the weak and insufficient participation and control by these democratically legitimated actors and organs turned out to be rather favourable for European integration in the past. But with the Treaty of Maastricht the enlargement of the Community of Twelve to the Union of Fifteen (Austria, Finland, Sweden) and the prospective widening of the EU to Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic) the prospects of European integration have dramatically changed. The deepening of `level' and `scope' of European policies and the enlargement of the Union members (15, 20 or even 25) challenges the institutional structure of the EU, which was originally designed in 1957 for economically, politically and culturally rather homogeneous member states. The deepening of the EU forced multiple supranational, national and subnational actors to claim more rights in participating and controlling the European decision making process. The long standing normative request of resolving the `democratic deficit' of the European Community became of functional prerequisite of further integration at the very moment when Visegrad states asked for full membership of the EU." (Merkel, 1996: 32-33).

As we have seen, according to the hypothesis of Merkel, the lack of democracy was highly functional for the earlier course of "purely" economic integration. However, the new deepening after Maastricht and the new enlargement with the three latest entrants, and even more the possibility of the next enlargement with the ECE states, have made the democracy deficit a major hindrance to the next step of European integration. Most analysts argue that for the further deepening of the EU the democracy deficit has to be diminished, but it has, in fact, increased with the series of enlargements. Therefore, "an efficiency-democracy dilemma" has emerged, and will be even aggravated, with every single new member state. Hence, we can conclude from this argument that these current political developments in the EU are very important concerning the possible inclusion of the ECE states. The present situation in, as well as the new structure of, the EU polity is not a neutral, but a vital issue for the ECE countries in view of their full integration and it should be discussed carefully.

Obviously, the ECE extension does not create new fundamental problems for the EU, but it aggravates the already existing ones, since this extension is not only or mostly of an economic nature, but also of a political and institutional nature. The post-Maastricht process already envisages that in order to increase the efficiency of the institutions and to facilitate further extension, the consensual decision-making process has to be abolished and successively replaced by a majoritarian principle. But, obviously, a majoritarian principle would produce serious problems for the outvoted member states, including the populations and interest organizations concerned. In the last analysis, these actions would threaten the democratic legitimacy of the EU for them. To sum up his argument, Merkel underlines that

"the premature eastward enlargement of the EU could trigger a downward spiral which erodes the efficiency and the legitimacy of the decision-making and implementation within the European Union. (...) Neither the institutional structure of the European Union, nor the common solidarity of its members, is prepared to deal with an increased number of member states and the subsequent further divergence of socio-economic and political interests within the Union. But without such an institutional reform the eastward enlargement would be premature." (Merkel, 1996: 47).

One can add to this argument that the latest enlargement has already been "premature" to a great extent, since democracy deficit has already largely been aggravated by this process. As Paul Luif states, the increasing influence of national parliaments in EU decision-making cannot be the preferred way to the democratization of the EU. This would hamper the efficiency of decision-making in the Council, and, in general, it would be an error to democratize one level of decision-making by solely strengthening the influence of an institution at another level. An even more transparent decision-making process of the Council is an important but not sufficient measure.

"In the end, concludes Luif, the EU can only be democratized by reinforcing popular participation at the EU level. This would mean increasing the power of the European Parliament. Many authors reject this idea since it would mean accepting the EU as a political entity with its own decision-making structures and effective allocation of resources. The accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden has brought the Union to an important frontier of its development. Future enlargements will bring much greater economic and political challenges." (Luif, 1995: 375).

Consequently, the limited Euro-capacity or "accession-capacity" of the ECE states is not the only problem, since the equally limited "extension-capacity" of the EU may be an even larger, mainly political and not only economic, problem. The "club of the rich" has reached its geographical limits in Europe with the latest extension (Austria, Finland and Sweden) by embracing these relatively homogeneous polities. Even this extension has produced an increasingly contradictory dual structure of the national and supranational bodies. The new possible ECE enlargement has brought, in addition, qualitatively different problems to the surface at the time when the long process of the extension from the original six to the present fifteen members has already created so far so many internal problems, including democracy deficit and crisis of representation.

Nowadays, the EU has to be transformed into a special type of "consociational" type of democracy, as it has been described by Arend Lijphart and designed recently with a special voting procedure by Philippe Schmitter (see Schmitter and Torreblanca, 1997), but this transformation is still very far down the road. This pending transformation crisis in the EU, however, hampers the ECE enlargement. It can delay the ECE extension which would effect the public mood very negatively in the ECE countries concerned and could trigger a downward spiral in the ECE popular support for European integration. Historically, the ECE states have arrived at the European integration process, once again, too late. By now, their entry has already become too difficult, that is, it has been overcomplicated on both sides with the difficulties coming from the nature of both the EU "old" and the ECE "young" democracies. Special political measures and efforts are needed to bridge this gap and to solve the problems stemming from the recent politicization of the Euro-issues and from the need for a larger popular participation in EU affairs.

A brief analysis of the European Union's political nature has shown that "systemic change" has transformed not only the "East" but also the "West", and the "Eastern" systemic change has had very serious impact upon the EU polity as well: "The sudden, dramatic collapse of the common enemy which had done so much to unify Western Europe unleashed a new wave of state particularism and differently perceived national interests. Preoccupied with domestic political issues and European recession, shocked by the unravelling of policy which accompanied the ratification of Maastricht, frightened at the apparent resurgence of right radicalism and disagreeing over wider issues of membership, the countries of the EC, along with the wider Atlantic Alliance, proved incapable of agreeing a coherent strategy for the former countries of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet successor states." (Millard, 1996: 221-22). This systemic change in the West, consequently, is the major reason for the missing "extension-capacity" of the EU, therefore, the systemic change in the "East", meaning here only the ECE states, beyond its own tremendous difficulties, has had to cope with the lack of a real Western partnership as well.

We have analyzed the democracy deficit in the EU as an immediate obstacle to the ECE extension "technically"-functionally as well as politically. It is now necessary to summarize our major argument that not only the ECE states have a limited Euro-capacity but also the EU has a limited extension-capacity, formulated clearly in the Copenhagen criteria of the full membership in June 1993. Furthermore, one has to be clear also that the EU activities so far have not been optimal at all for assisting the ECE states to be prepared for full membership, but the EU attitude can be termed much more as benign neglect. In the early nineties the EU was very hesitant to treat the ECE states as possible members by offering them only asymmetrical Euro-agreements. Finally, the principal commitment of the EU to the ECE enlargement has never been linked to any definite time-table.

This hesitation and benign neglect by the EU was quite clear even right after the earthquake that had liquidated the state socialist regimes in ECE. Peter van Ham describes those decisive years of 1991 and 1992 in the following way:

"Early in 1990, the Commission made it abundantly clear that the association agreements with Central Europe were no automatic entrance tickets to the Community itself. During the EC Council meeting in Dublin, April 1990, no mention was even made as to their future membership. However, Warsaw, Budapest and Prague have demanded an agreement in which it will be clearly stipulated that association will be the first step towards membership. (...) On 15 April 1991, the EC Foreign Ministers decided that membership of the EC could be mentioned in the Preamble to the association agreements as `ultimate, though not automatic' goal. (...) Only after one month of bickering did the Commission table a compromise which proved to be acceptable to all sides. However, the Central Europeans only very reluctantly approved it, knowing that this was the most `generous' offer they could possibly hope for." (van Ham, 1995: 198-99).

Nevertheless, the association treaties or Euro-agreements were signed by Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia on 16 December 1991 in Brussels - based on this `generous offer'. Therefore, by discussing these problems of the ECE extension, Merkel also indicates this benign neglect by pointing out that even the substance of the Euro-agreements has turned out to be considerably below the expectations of the ECE states themselves for the reasons below:

"The asymmetric opening of the European market does not include the so called sensitive sectors of the EU: coal, steel, textile and agriculture. But these are the only economic sectors where the East Central European economies can effectively compete with West European products. (2) The EU rejected financially binding commitments in the agreement. Financial protocols, such as in the case of associated Turkey, were not signed. The Phare support was realistically considered as completely inadequate by the associated countries. (3) Regarding the free movement of workers only minimal concessions were made to the Visegrád states by the EU." (Merkel, 1996: 45-46).3

Some other authors have also made similar assessments concerning the obstacles created by the insufficient and/or counterproductive EU support for the ECE countries in their European integration process which have been formulated in the asymmetrical association treaties. Adrian Hyde-Price, for instance, argues that "Sadly, the enthusiasm and commitment of Visegrad countries has not been matched by the West Europeans. On the contrary, the EU member states have responded to the historic challenge of reuniting a divided continent with a lack of imagination and a meanness in spirit which beggars belief." (Hyde-Price, 1996: 201). A recent book edited by Robert Bideleux and Richard Taylor, however, analyses this issue much more in detail which gives us an opportunity for us to summarize the phenomena of the "benign neglect".

Different analyses in this book have converged in two important statements: first, in 1990-91 the EU had no coherent strategy towards the ECE states because it was so preoccupied with its own problems, and, second, this continued lack of a strategy has caused a lot of problems for the ECE states whose role has been reduced to reacting to EU demands and preconditions. Amply analysing Poland's "Return to Europe", Frances Milliard draws these conclusions quite definitely:

"it was difficult to detect a coherent EC strategy for Eastern Europe in the first five post-communist years, not least because its member states had different views and priorities regarding Eastern Europe and because of internal preoccupation with Maastricht. A major focus was the question of accession to the European Community. (...) By the late 1994 the new European Union was still a long way from deciding where `Europe' was to end, with all the attendant implications of a larger Community for its own internal functioning." And, in the last analysis, "the countries of the EC, along with the wider Atlantic Alliance, proved incapable of agreeing upon a coherent strategy for the former countries of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet successor states. The East European position, including that of Poland, was largely reactive and dependent, forcing the aspiring into the different military and foreign policy limbo of a commitment to a Europe itself uncertain of its aims and its boundaries." (Millard, 1996: 217, 221-22).

Robert Bideleux has analysed the EU approach in a complex way, by pointing out its economic and political sides in their interrelationships. To dissipate the myth of large-scale Western economic assistance to Eastern Europe he mentions first, that unlike the Marshall aid which was an eighty per cent non-repayable grant, most of the Western aid to Central and Eastern Europe in the nineties has been either loans or trade credits to promote Western export to the region. Altogether, official aid flows to Central and Eastern Europe have not compensated the "East" for the trade deficits, that is, more money has been paid annually to the West from the East in different repayments than the East European countries have received from the West in the form of aid programmes. As we have already discussed, the EU has developed an asymmetrial trade regime with the ECE states, what also Bideleux has pointed out here in a great detail, in order to conclude the economic analysis with a rather critical statement for the EU: "Finally, despite appearences to the contrary, the EC did very little to integrate Eastern Europe into the mainstream European development. (...) The EC's overriding aim seemed to be to keep the East European states at arm's length (...) and East European governments felt increasingly insulted by the EC's defensive and patronizing language and attitudes." (Bideleux, 1996: 233).4

The asymmetrical trade and economic relations between the EU and the ECE states have had, however, very serious political consequences and have created, in fact, a trap for them: "By retarding the growth of East European exports to Western Europe, EC import restrictions would not only retard East European economic recovery and long-term economic growth, but would also (by the same token) substantially delay their potential eventual accession to the EU on the grounds that their economies were still too weak to withstand EU membership!" (Bideleux, 1996: 234). From this point of departure, Bideleux overviews the political reasons for the Western benign neglect. In the first place, there is no longer a "communist bogey", a fear of "the Soviet threat". Second, the ECE extension may strengthen an increasing German economic hegemony. Finally, the EU states have been preoccupied with their own internal problems, as it has been underlined in different analyses several times. The result of the political considerations is that "It was extremely unfortunate that the mammoth tasks of building liberal, pluralistic parliamentary democracies and market economies in Eastern Europe coincided with the onset of severe and prolonged economic recessions in the West and with politically problematic and divisive moves towards deeper integration within the EC (...) But there was also a grave failure of political leadership." (Bideleux, 1996: 235).5

"Systemic change" in the West has not yet produced a new institutionalization so far, but it has created a new dependency in the "East", in the ECE states. Ironically, as Bideleux notes, the 1989 revolutions in the "East" were in some ways also a negative turning point for the EU: "For the EC itself, the emergence of Eastern Europe from its communist cocoon in 1989 was highly inconvenient, for the EC had partly relied on the Cold War partition of Europe for much of its cohesion, sense of purpose and stability. The new Europe would be much less stable and cohesive and would take time to gain a new sense of direction." (Bideleux, 1996: 248). Millard has commented upon this systemic change in the same spirit: "The sudden, dramatic collapse of the common enemy which has done so much to unify Western Europe unleashed a new wave of state particularism and differently perceived national interests." (Millard, 1996: 221). The West suffers from the instability created by the "Eastern" transition and the "East" equally suffers from the huge gap between Western words and deeds, rhetoric and actions.6

There is a Europeanization paradox of representative democracy, or representation paradox, namely in all EU member countries the elites are much more committed to European integration than the populations and the same is true for the ECE countries. Therefore, the intensive involvement of the populations in the political integration process can derail both the deepening and the extension of the EU because of divergent national and sectoral, regional and professional interests. The same goes for the wider involvement of populations of the ECE countries. They are less and less happy with the elite-led integration process and after some years they may not be ready to accept its results through referenda. Thus, there is a need for a "new deal" or social contract with the populations concerned in ECE, since their involvement in European integration through their active participation in the decision-making processes is inevitable on both theoretical-normative and pragmatic-political grounds. The "efficiency-democracy dilemma" appears in ECE much more urgently than in the West. In the first half of nineties the elite-led integration process seemed to be the most efficient - actually, the only - way to negotiate with the EU. But in the second half of the decade it has become clear that, in the last analysis, it may not be effective at all. The reduction of the management of integration process to the national executives already proves to be to a great extent counterproductive, that is, an exclusively elite-led preparation process involves the danger of a negative vote in a referendum.7

The experience of the new entrants has shown that the association-accession process has three, largely overlapping, stages. In the first stage the governments propose the EU membership; they begin to negotiate and prepare the preconditions for the structural adjustment to the EU. Even in the first stage the public awareness grows to some extent and the parliament steps into the preparation process in some ways. But the national parliaments become dominant actors only in the second stage because they are vital during the negotiations for the full membership and later on, in its ratification process. In the third stage, however, right before the end of negotiations the role of the populations turns out to be crucial. The populations enter the scene as articulated societies with their organized interests and civil society associations, and their role culminates in the referendum. As all three of the cases of new entrants demonstrate, the referenda results cannot be taken for granted, since in two other cases the results were negative (no to "Europe" in Norway and Switzerland) and in the three positive cases only a slight majority voted for integration. These three stages, of course, may be fully separated only analytically and not historically, since they largely overlap. For sure, at the beginning of the process the role of the executive is the most important and at the end both the parliament and the public play a more decisive role. The national parliaments are leading actors in the final decision-making process as well as the chief intermediaries between the government and the public while discussing and managing the integration process (on the new entrants see Fitzmaurice, 1996; Hegeland and Mattson, 1996; Luif, 1995; Raunio and Wiberg, 1997; and Wiberg, 1996).

The ECE central governments have done a great deal in managing the association with and accession to the EU. First of all they have created special institutions at the national level to direct this process and to monitor the structural adjustment in all fields. Second, they have established the contact institutions with the EU in the form of Association Councils at the ministers' level and Association Commissions at the level of senior civil servants. As the Polish analysts describe (see Belka et al., 1996: 220-222), there is a need to find an appropriate coordination mechanism in the area of European integration, at the same time this need has been one of the major reasons for the central government reforms in the ECE countries. There are three models or institutional solutions of this coordination role in the EU:

(i) The British and French model - the highest centralization of powers connected with integrative measures. These powers are basically divided between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dealing with political measures, and another central organs, dealing with economic and policy measures.

(ii) The Belgian and Spanish model - marked by the dominant role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in all Euro-issues, consulting with the interministerial integration commissions.

(iii) The German model - various ministries take charge for the Euro-issues of their particular concern and these measures are to be coordinated by the Prime Minister's Office.

In Poland and in Hungary, the coordination mechanism that emerged in the early nineties was closest to the German model. In Poland, however, there was a more centralized coordination under the supervision of the Office of Plenipotentary for European Integration. In Hungary, in turn, there was a duality and rivalry between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of International Economic Relations (merged with the Ministry of Industry and Trade in 1994). This fragmented mechanism of steering made the coordination rather difficult, so both countries undertook some steps of centralizing it for higher efficiency. In August 1996, the European Integration Committee was organized in Poland, headed by the Prime Minister, and a special Office for Integration to coordinate the policy issues. In Hungary, the Prime Minister chairs the Strategic Task Force on European Integration, a special advisory body, and parallel with it, a European Integration Cabinet was created with interministerial commissions (Inotai, 1997: 65). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has kept its dominance in the institutional structure, since the major coordination body, the Integration State Secretariat works here under the direct control of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Despite these institutional reforms and the good performance of the ECE coordination teams, this "elite approach" of small government organs with specialized experts has reached its limits. In the ECE countries the integration process, however, is still in the governmental stage and the parliamentarization of this issue has hardly begun, although the transition from the first stage to the second one must have begun in ECE earlier than in the older EU democracies, since the ECE governments have much less legitimacy on their own than the EU national governments. The postponement of the parliamentarization stage, however, has a number of reasons. First, because of the troubled conditions of democratic transition, the ECE governments try to concentrate all actual power in their hands. Second, the EU authorities have negotiated so far almost exclusively with the governments. The competences of the EP have been very small in this stage of the process, therefore, its contacts with the national parliaments have also been less instrumental than those of the executives on both sides. Third, the national parliaments are relatively weak and their popularity is rather low, therefore, their influence in the national decision-making is much less than needed. Their "Euro-capacity" is also small, since most of the EU experts work for the governments and not for the parliaments; and the MPs themselves are not yet really prepared to handle the complicated Euro-issues meaningfully and in detail.

Thus, institutional, international and subjective factors still necessitate the prolonged dominance of the government in this process versus the parliaments, and other social and political actors. In addition, the parliamentary parties and, even more, the interest organizations are rather weak in this respect. They may have some Euro-ideas, but certainly, they do not have yet, or only in a very limited way, their own Euro-policies, with expert staffs and mobilization capacity on Euro-issues. Summing up: The governments still try to control the entire Europeanization process and they are not ready to give a greater role to the parliaments. The parliaments, in turn, are neither prepared for, nor willing to undertake the role of managing Europeanization. The self-centred activity of the executives, the delay of parliamentarization of the Europeanization process and the lack of the proper popular participation, however, may lead to a declining interest of ECE publics in European integration.

The "post-revolutionary hangover" or Euro-fatigue of the ECE populations, of course, has both internal and external reasons. The overheated expectations in the early nineties, including the unfounded promises and empty rhetoric of Western leaders, have also caused widespread disappointment. In the early nineties the EU could have taken a major political decision to integrate the most developed ECE countries and to give them substantial assistance for the acceleration of their socio-economic structural adjustments. But the EU missed that opportunity because of its own internal difficulties, although at the time of the great changes, i.e. right after the collapse of state socialist system, the populations of the EU member states might have accepted this ECE enlargement. Later on, a sober and short sighted view has prevailed which has regarded the ECE states less and less as new democracies to be assisted but simply as economically less developed countries which can only be a burden for the EU deepening process. The political and moral commitment to the ECE extension increasingly weakened and appeared finally in the form of pure rhetoric, that is, in the first half of nineties very few practical actions were taken for the integration of the ECE states.

From the early nineties on, there have always been promises by the EU or by its individual member states about full membership of the ECE states within the next three-five years. As the time has passed by, these promises have constantly been both renewed and postponed again, in the same way, that is, for the next three-five years. Initially, the ECE political elites took these promises for too seriously themselves, and exaggerated them even more for their own interests, i.e. for both electoral and legitimation purposes. By the mid-nineties, however, the ECE political elites took already this EU rhetoric more cautiously, although they have never ceased to overvalue it. Actually, the ECE public has constantly been bombarded with positive informations and high expectations from both home and abroad - all the time, but nothing serious has happened.

The Western public has been manipulated to a great extent by the inflated calculations about the costs of the Eastern enlargement which has caused a significant deterrence effect. The most characteristic form of this deterrence effect has been the calculation about the costs of full EU membership of all Central and East European states immediately, or about that of the ten associated members - producing usually astronomical figures. It is misleading, since it is absolutely unrealistic that all the ten states will join the EU very soon. Obviously, in the next future the EU will integrate only some - according to the decision of the Amsterdam summit (June 1997) five - ECE countries. Hence, the calculation of the financial costs and the consideration of political-institutional consequences of the Eastern enlargement is legitimate only concerning these five countries. The further enlargement would proceed much later, in smaller groups and in some steps, one after the another in the next decades. Therefore, this aggregate calculation about ten or twenty countries is both economically unfounded and politically misleading.

The situation of the public opinion in ECE concerning European integration deserves special attention and study. The public mood in the nineties has been basically determined by the cycles of mobilization - demobilization - remobilization which have followed one another in ECE. First, the public was mobilized in a form of social movements against the state socialist system, then these social movements were drastically demobilized by the newly emerging parties, but the populations have been remobilized by the parties from time to time for the elections. Actually, because of the initial demobilization by the newly emerging parties, the public perceived the entire process of democratic transition as mostly an elite-led process. The Europeanization issue was for the public just a part of this elite-led politics. Meanwhile, however, an alienation from "high" politics grew tremendously and, as a result, for many people Europeanization appeared as a mere "elite issue" they were not concerned with. This relative lack of interest, or the diminishing interest, in Europeanization contrasted with a high level of public interest in it right after the collapse of state socialism (e.g. the positive assessment of the EU shrunk between 1992 and 1995 from 45.4 to 26.4 per cent in the Czech Republic, see Mansfeldová, 1997: 2). This public concern was eroded not only by fake promises at home and abroad but also by the commonplaces of "Return to Europe" and the inability of parties to form their Euro-policies and to present them in everyday terms. The intellectual and political level of the European discourse was so low for many years that this empty sloganeering already produced an irritation for the public. The national governments and parties also lacked a proper communication strategy. Just in the mid-nineties the claim for popular communication on Euro-issues appeared seriously as a need of talking about Europe "in European", that is, adequately and substantially.

In 1997, however, a major change came in the public opinion about the EU which broke the above mentioned declining trend and brought a real breakthrough in the support for the EU membership and also in the interest in the EU matters (see in the Political Yearbook of Hungary 1998). The turning point in the domestic economic and political development might have played the decisive role in this breakthrough and in its cautious optimism because the results of the successful economic crisis management after March 1995 could be felt by 1997. Some benefits of the crisis management appeared already in 1996 and by 1997 sustainable economic growth clearly began with a 3.9 per cent growth and the same (4.1 per cent) can be expected for 1998. The economic growth produced, after some years of decline, an improving standard of living, the estimated increase of the real wages was 10 to 15 per cent in 1997.

The public opinion about the EU and full membership has not only been improved by 1997 but it has also been basically restructured. The image of Europe in Hungary or the Euro-image of the Hungarians until the mid-nineties was rather passive and traditionalist. It suggested that Europe is simply the continent where we live on, in its geographic and cultural context. Although even in 1997 this traditionalist approach still gave a majority among the population (57.1 per cent), yet the much more active, normative and development-centred approaches gained a bigger influence than in the previous years. Thus, Europe was identified more than before with a political unity and community of nations (13.1 per cent) or with an economic development-centre (10.7 per cent). Not surprisingly, these new Euro-images were advocated mostly by the young adults (aged between 18-29 years).

There is a close correlation between the interest in politics and the support for the EU membership. In 1997, according to this poll, those who have an interest in politics and have a definite choice among the parties (60.0 per cent of population), would support the membership. The remaining 40.0 per cent of the Hungarian population may be divided into three groups, 19.2 per cent was undecided concerning the EU membership and only 7.5 per cent was against, with 13.3 per cent of dontknows. These groups were, in turn, from among those who were also undecided in (party) politics, i.e. not having a favourite party and/or not intending to vote. These figures represent a big step ahead in the support of the EU compared to the previous decline. But as the November 1997 NATO referendum has shown, the major problem in the support of the Hungarian population for the Euro-Atlantic integration is not the percentage of the positive votes (it was 85.33 per cent) but that of the turnout (it was only 49.24 per cent). This low interest in participation is due to the longlasting effects of economic crisis, and the drastic crisis management, which has a clear regional dimension. Thus, the participation was much higher in the more developed and consolidated Western part of Hungary than in its crisis ridden and less developed Eastern part. Namely the turnout in November 1977 was only 39.92 per cent in the Easternmost county and 54.04 per cent in the Westernmost county, with Budapest reaching 57.15 per cent, but the support for the NATO membership was in all counties well above 80 per cent. This referendum results, therefore, suggest some optimism but also contain a warning about the popular participation in the coming EU referendum.

Europeanization is a broad process embracing all the three major areas of political-legal structures, economy and civil society (see Ágh, 1994). It is an old story that the socio-economic features have mostly been overemphasized and the political-legal ones have been almost completely forgotten, neglected or at least minimised in the description of both Europeanization and the criteria for full EU membership. In the second half of the nineties, however, the political harmonization, that is the structural adjustment of the ECE polities to the EU standards, comes more and more to the forefront and it has become more important than the economic and/or legal adjustment. In the case of four CEFTA countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia), the democratization process has by and large come to an end and democratic order as one of the preconditions of the full membership has been taken for granted. Meanwhile, however, more and more problems come to the surface with the "working" of the political system or with the criteria of an "effective" democracy, and the Euro-capacity or Euro-conformity of ECE polities has been increasingly questioned from this angle. Simply stated, the new democratic structures, the newly (re-)organized or established institutions have still only a rather low capacity to transfer home and to apply Euro-policies. In general terms, the actual political performance of the new democratic institutions is very insufficient, that is, their effectiveness, efficiency and efficacy do not meet yet the requirements of the EU.

Consequently, political harmonization cannot be limited to the establishment, "domestication" and "copying" of Western constitutional models and major institutions, including those of the EU and the "interface" structures to get in contact with them. Beyond this, as a second phase, political harmonization increasingly demands both political and administrative modernization to raise the "poli-technical" capacity of the ECE political systems to cope with the Euro-issues effectively and efficiently, and to implement them with high efficacy as a real "working" democracy. One of the major reasons for a low Euro-capacity of the ECE polities has been the state or government overload in general and in the management of the EU affairs in particular. In order to solve this problem, the ECE countries have to switch from the institution transfer to the policy transfer (see Ágh, 1997 and 1998).

The management of accession to the EU in ECE has been a typical case of state or government overload, therefore, it has been not only politically counterproductive (i.e. creating a democracy deficit by alienating the population) but also "functionally" inefficient and, finally, ineffective as well, that is, not producing the desirable results. As to the constitutional structures of the democratic institutions, the ECE polities are already more or less structurally homogeneous with the EU and its member states, but the ECE countries have still to enhance their political capacity to apply EU decisions and basic policies efficiently. They have to break out from the narrow horizon of a government's activities and to broaden it to a multi-actor approach, represented and mediated mostly by the ECE national parliaments.

The ECE parliaments, of course, have to "Europeanize" themselves, too. They are the classical case of the "institutional" Europeanization on one hand, and the "functional" lack of Euro-capacity on the other. The Europeanization of the ECE parliaments has been one of the main political accomodation or adjustment processes. The ECE parliaments have been aware of the latest developments of the Western parliamentary system and they have tried to adjust to its present stage, borrowing its institutions, including committee systems in a mature form. This institution-building process inside the parliaments has been at the same time an important part of the ECE political modernization process in general, since the parliaments have been the mother and model institutions, so the other institutions and actors have followed suit, e.g. through the parliamentarization of parties, etc. (see Ágh, 1996).

However, ECE parliaments have also been overburdened with legislative tasks (hence, I have described them as legislative factories) and they have also failed to perform well in their other functions, first of all in their control or oversight function over executive power. It is relatively easy to point out the major features of the "diseconomies" in the ECE parliaments, e.g. as the gap between the legislative agenda and the actual legislation, or the very high percentage of the poorly prepared acts still passed by these parliaments which have had to be amended afterwards, etc. I mention here these deficiencies deliberately in order to conclude that the tasks of the Europeanization has even more overburdened the ECE parliaments. This overload has appeared both in their general handling of Euro-issues and in the workings of the EU committees. In discussing, processing and implementing Euro-issues as a complex "policy universe", these parliaments have tried to overcome the institutional deficit by creating their proper organs, above all the EU committees. But the activities of these committees have proven that it has been much more difficult to overcome a "cultural" than an "institutional" deficit, i.e. the lack of professionalism and expertise in the European policy universe. Thus, the contrast between their formal-legal and actual-political powers is very large. The EU committees have not been able to use their institutional potentials, including their control capacity over the negotiations of the national executives with the EU authorities. The ECE national parliaments are only in the initial phase of meeting the challenge of the European integration process, concerning the "European" legislation or legislating about the European policy universe. Above all their EU committees have been very much lagging behind the needs and all the functional weaknesses of the early democratic parliaments in ECE have been cumulated in their EU committees in some ways. The need to create a parliamentary consensus has been formulated by the political leadership (see e.g. Somogyi, 1997: 16), but its ways and means have not yet been elaborated.

The basic paradox of Europeanization, as a special case of the representation paradox, is that at the moment when parliaments would have to take a leading role in the European integration process from the governments, the parliaments are not only weak in their performance in general, but they are especially weak concerning the handling of the European policy universe in particular. All ECE parliaments have established a European Affairs Committee which is the partner institution with a EP committee forming together a Joint Parliamentary Committee. These JPCs and the European Affairs Committees of the ECE parliaments have made great efforts for the support of European integration. Yet, these EU committees have usually been among the least important and powerful committees. They show a shocking contrast to the strong "grand committees" of the latest entrants. Nowadays, the ECE parliaments are obviously not yet able to meet the challenge of the Europeanization, but this challenge would provide an institutional pressure for them to perform their own internal Europeanization and political modernization (see Martin, 1995).

The same goes for the main political and social actors, that is, for parties and organized interests. Again, paradoxically, the serious treatment of Euro-issues in the ECE parliaments has been hindered not so much by the "anti-European" parties but by a too vague commitment of the parliamentary parties to Europeanization, since they have had no definitely outlined Europeanization policies, programmes or profiles of their own. Just some marginal parties have produced anti-European ideas and sentiments, even the markedly populist parties in the ECE parliaments have usually avoided a direct confrontation with Europeanization. These populist parties have found some indirect forms and ways for their resistence against European integration, in most cases by reinterpreting "Europe" according to their own taste. There has been so far a vague and nebulous consent about Europeanization which has not allowed, directly and publicly, for the articulation of anti-European ideas and interests.

This vague and fragile ideological and political consent seems to fade away in the second half of the nineties and a period of more careful and professional treatment of the European policy universe, with a closer policy scrutiny in detail, has begun. This has also been connected with the fact that the perspective of a rapid and painless integration has disappeared. In the spirit of a remote and painful integration and under pressure of the ongoing partial integration process in the associated member states of ECE, the domestic actors have simply been forced to deal with the Euro-issues more closely and more professionally, which has dissipated the former ideology of "Return to Europe". The contours of pro and against arguments have become much clearer, the conflicting interests, for instance in the agriculture, have come more to the fore in public debates and different approaches have been more directly supported by the conflicting parties.

Europeanization "has arrived" at the party politics and at the public debates of organized interests. But Europeanization becomes a serious political and policy issue for the ECE countries only if and when an influential and legitimate opposition emerges against it, since an opposition enables the proper articulation of views and interests for and against the Europeanization. The public debate reflects already more and more the real conflict of interests, and it could create and institutionalise an articulated and structured social support for Europeanization. We are now at this turning point, but the creation of widespread and articulated public support for Europeanization may be more difficult in the next stage of democratic consolidation than the establishment of a system of basic democratic institutions was in the former stage of democratic transition.

Obviously, there are high expectations toward the ECE parliaments for the late nineties when the negotiations about the full membership have already begun. Thus, the following main tasks have to be arranged as soon as possible:

There is a particular committee system around the EP which deserves special attention by the ECE countries, both by policy-makers and MPs. The May 1989 Madrid Conference of Presidents of the EU national parliaments unanimously decided to convoke a conference of those committees of the national parliaments dealing with the EU affairs, including the representatives of the EP itself. The first such conference was held in Paris in November 1989, where it was decided that the conference should meet at least twice a year, that is, once under each six-month presidency in the country holding the Presidency of the Council. The fourth such conference (Luxembourg, May 1991) adopted an official title by its French acronym, COSAC for the Conference of the Organs Specialising in Community Affairs. The sixth COSAC meeting (Lisbon, May 1992) established a system of regular inter-parliamentary correspondence on European activities. As a result of the workings of the COSAC, the national parliaments have strengthened their contacts with the EP and have established special liaison offices within the EP. The EP has usually been represented in the regular COSAC meetings by the Vice-President responsible for the relations with the national parliaments (see Westlake, 1994: 60; Jacobs et al., 1992: 261; and Tatham, 1996: 4-5).

The establishment of the COSAC for the EU has been a major effort to improve the mutual information and cooperation of the EU national parliaments as well as to lessen the democracy deficit. Obviously, a COSAC type of organization could serve for the ECE parliaments and for their EU committees both as the best source of information about the relationship with the EP and with the EU national parliaments, and as a model for the workings of the ECE parliaments and for their cooperation in the pre-accession stage. The establishment of a COSAC type organization for the ECE parliaments would be the most desirable step in the institutionalization of their contacts which would facilitate the accession process before and after full membership to a great extent.

The experiences of the new entrants have shown that there has been a need for an intermediary body both between the EU and the national parliaments, as well as between the national parliaments and the national governments. All three new EU member countries have created some kind of a "Grand Committee" with regular meetings and binding decisions for the governments in the EU matters (see Luif, 1995: 330-46 and Wiberg, 1996: 12-15). It is obvious that the ECE parliaments have to establish sooner or later a new form of this "Grand Committee" to play a decisive role in EU affairs.

For a detailed overview and discussion of EU matters, beyond the "Grand Committee", all relevant standing committees have to create their own Euro-subcommittees, or to extend the existing ones. They have to discuss the European issues in all dimensions and in the necessary details with all the interest groups concerned in order to channel their opinions to the national parliaments and to provide them with information.

The national parliaments, in order to scrutinize the governments' policies on Euro-issues and to make their own decisions on all important policies of the Europeanization process, have to organize an independent documentation and information centre with a large network of experts, at the disposal of the EU committee and the relevant EU sub-committees.

Beyond the general tasks of professionalization of the MPs, all, or most of, the MPs have to "learn Europe" in order to be able to discuss the Europeanization process meaningfully and in depth, relying on the work of large expert staff and on the services of the documentation and information centre. A new type of the MPs has to emerge: a large circle of the Euro-expert MPs in all parties, some of them will be MEPs.

The ECE national parliaments have to be opened towards the organized interests concerning the European issues in order to cope with the representation paradox. They have to obtain the necessary information from the relevant interest groups about their Euro-policies to be able to form a unified national policy as a policy-package for negotiations. Beyond the regular contacts between parliamentary committees and interest groups, special plenary meetings have to deal permanently with the different aspects of the European "policy universe", involving the organized interests concerned in the preparation and implementation process.

The national governments have prepared, or are going to prepare, communication strategies to make their concerns understood in the Europeanization process. The national parliaments have to elaborate a similar strategy of their own, to "publicize" their debates on the Euro-issues on one side and to enhance their democratic legitimacy as one of the major means of Europeanization on the other.

The final conclusion is that Europeanization of representation in ECE means first of all that the ECE countries, their governments and parliaments alike, have to learn from the EU and its member states how to defend and represent their own national and/or regional interests successfully. The ECE countries have been very weak so far in this respect and have often been subjected to victimization by the other actors. In the late nineties, at the period of negotiations for full membership, however, the ECE countries have to show a much better performance in interest representation, in order to prove their Euro-capacity and maturity for the EU even at the negotiations which will decide about the particular circumstances of their accession process.

1. In the following analysis of the EU's democratic deficit I rely mostly on the work of Merkel, 1996. I try only to outline the democratic deficit in the EU as regards its implication upon the ECE extension and I do not analyze here this complex problem in itself. A summary of the EP developments versus national parliaments has been given by Tatham (1996), otherwise an extensive description may be found in the standard literature (Westlake, 1994, and Jacobs et al., 1992; see first of all the descriptions of the powers of the EP and its committee system; and concerning the relationship of national parliaments and the European Parliament see Norton (ed), 1995).

2. On the democratic deficit at the European Parliament see first of all Norton, 1995 which gives an overall view with the list of EU affairs committees in the national parliaments and dates of their creation (Norton, 1995: 180). Concerning the new entrants I have used first of all the book of Luif on the legal adjustments to the EU membership (Luif, 1995: 330-375), and also the papers of Wiberg and, Hegeland and Mattson.

3. Peter van Ham has also decribed the economic negotiations and the protest of the ECE representatives against the "highly unbalanced" EU offers. The Polish delegate formulated his view in the following way: "There is no government in the world which would submit such a one-sided agreement to its parliament for ratification." (van Ham, 1995: 198). Frances Millard has also noted that "Negotiations for the agreement proved arduous and often bad tempered with the Poles threatening to terminate the talks on several occasions." (Millard, 1996: 218). But the EU finally abused its overweight and yet the parliaments of the weak ECE democracies ratified these agreements.

4. Alice Enders compares the Euro-agreements and the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) treaty and concludes that "Europe agreements limit the economic benefits to the Central and East European countries of trade reform. Asymmetry postpones trade reform and therefore the realization of economic benefits" (Enders, 1996: 262).

5. Robert Bideleux quotes the Hungarian minister of foreign affairs from October 1993 by saying: "Three times in recent history Western powers have promised liberation to the peoples of Eastern Europe, but the East European nations finally won freedom for themselves. Today, however, a crisis of confidence is emerging on both sides: the West is questioning Eastern Europe's ability to make good use of freedom, while East Europeans are voicing doubts about the seriousness of Western helpfulness. In my region people feel disoriented and increasingly unhappy." (Bideleux, 1996: 229).

6. Robert Bideleux quotes here the comment of Edward Mortimer from November 1992: "No European leader has set out clearly for his electorate the nature of the opportunities and dangers which events in the east have produced for western Europe. As a result, it seems that none now has the authority to demand the sacrifices required from the domestic vested interests, notably the farming and other producer lobbies which oppose the opening of the west European market to the most competitive east European products." (Bideleux, 1996: 235).

7. There is a simplification that the Western political elites want the ECE extension and the populations oppose it. The other simplification is that the Southern countries oppose it more than the Northern countries in the EU. A public opinion poll organized by eight West European newspapers in May 1994 proves actually the opposite of the latter. The percentage of negative replies was 13 in Spain, 14 in Italy, 17 in Portugal, 24 in the Netherlands, 28 in Eastern Germany, 29 in Greece, 31 in Belgium and Ireland, 38 in the UK and Luxembourg, 40 in France, 43 in Western Germany and 46 in Denmark (see Bideleux, 1996: 244). At the same time one should not forget about the referenda at the new entrants. The positive votes were the following: Austria 66.6 per cent (12 June 1994), Finland 56.9 per cent (16 October 1994), Sweden 52.7 per cent (13 November 1994) and Norway 47.7 per cent (27 November 1994 - the first negative vote was in 1972). Switzerland had a referendum on 1 January 1993 and the Swiss rejected the European Economic Area (EEA) Treaty (see Luif, 1995: 166, 320). As to the former, in a Eurobarometer survey on the support for the Eastern enlargement, published in November 1997, the results were the following as an average of the 15 EU countries, with the percentages for and against: Hungary (49-28), Poland (46-33), the Czech Republic (43-33), Slovakia (36-38) and Slovenia (34-39).

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