Does the EU operate with double standards towards new candidate members, compared to the past? Especially the government in Ankara is making this reproach, blaming Brussels for looking every time after new arguments to keep Turkey outside the Union. But also some Balkan countries are complaining about the stricter conditions they have to fulfill now and which are much stricter than those in the past.
These countries are both right and wrong at the same time. They are right, as far as one looks back for several decades, regarding Turkey for example, that appeared on the short-list of possible future member states already half a century ago. The conditions that were stipulated then were different than those stipulated now. But that's for a big part because the EU has changed in character during this fifty years too. In fact, at the time those first promises were made to Turkey, the EU didn't exist at all. There was the EEC, a much looser union, limited to economic cooperation. Only much later the EEC underwent some major changes, transforming into the EU. It is clear that for a purely economic league you need less agreement - concentrating only on fixed rules for a functioning free market - than in the case of a political one. To function, that kind of union needs to organize more together. And to be able to do that, the member states should have more in common. It's also about legislation, and thus about underlying values and the internal organization of society.
It is quite clear that at the moment the first promises were made to Ankara, it only was meant for the existing economical cooperation. The later promises in the '90s - after the political EU had came into being which resulted in the start of the now stagnant negotiations - were only made because of those former promises. The fact that those first promises were followed by new ones, was because European politicians hate to quarrel. No European leader dared to say 'no' at the crucial moment, hoping that the problem would settle itself later, when finding a solution really should become urgent. That would be the problem of their successors and not theirs.
This might even explain why those promises were made to Turkey in the beginning at all. One may not only doubt - one in fact can be quite sure of the reverse - that De Gaulle and Adenauer as catholic Christians should suppose France and Germany to have enough in common with a distant Islamic country to build some political federation in the far future. One may even doubt if the promises made during their 'reign' to Turkey to join the EEC in some future were really serious.
In those days we waged the Cold War, the United States were dominating western politics, Washington was searching for a nice place near to the Sovjet Union to get rid of some missiles to threaten Moscow, Ankara had to become convinced of the fact that Turkey indeed was that nice place, and thus it had to be made some interesting offer it couldn't refuse. Well, the countries of the EEC, dependent for their safety on the Americans, on their turn couldn't refuse to make that offer, so they made it - for the far future. As democratic politicians often - or should I say: always? - think and do in such cases: when - if ever - the redemption of such a promise is demanded, we ourselves are already enjoying our retirement pension for many years.
That indeed has become one of the main problems today in Europe anyhow - shortsightedness as a result of the half-years-rotational system. We saw it in 2004, again in the case of Turkey, when the Dutch prime-minister Jan Peter Balkenende and his foreign secretary Ben Bot on their return home jumped out of the plane elated with joy: a definitive solution regarding Cyprus was agreed upon. Of course, there were still some details to be solved, but they would be solved during the next negotiations a dozen months later, when London would have taken over the Presidency of the EU. But, as we all know, the devil is in the details, and in the case of Turkey and the conflict over Cyprus the devil never went out.
This brings us back to the 'wrong' in regard to the complaints I mentioned in the beginning: namely the complaints that rules have become stricter. Partly they haven't become really stricter as such, but obedience to the rules nowadays is more strictly observed. For good reason, because that's the lesson paid for as a consequence of the former naivety regarding Romania and Bulgaria.
The main point that has never been discussed seriously is the question what the eastern borders of a workable Europe can be. In the north, west and south they are quite clear, thanks to geography. When European cooperation started after World War II, the eastern border wasn't a big issue because all the potential problematic countries - apart from Greece, as we are reminded everyday now - did luckily disappear behind the Iron Curtain. The eastern border for the time being - and this then was expected to be a rather long 'time being' - had to lie just behind Lübeck, Helmstedt, Vienna and Triest.
Shortly after the Iron Curtain was lifted in 1989 and for very reasonable political and historical reasons, Brussels felt the moral duty to open the brand new European Union in principle to all - old or newly built - countries liberated from Soviet domination, from Estonia to Macedonia. Because of the ongoing civil war in former Yugoslavia, membership negotiations first where limited to only eight of them.
In the beginning, the idea was that they should join separately, when time in each case was ripe. Later, it was decided that they would join together to avoid wry faces by those lagging behind. But during those negotiations it became quite clear that Bucharest and Sofia by no means would be able to fulfill the conditions in the year 2004, the agreed deadline for membership. So they had to wait. Their own reaction was positive: no problem, we will join three years later. Although it was absolutely unrealistic to expect that in this short time all necessary reform work would have been realized - it indeed takes generations - nobody in Brussels dared to disappoint them by confronting them with reality.
So when the year 2007 started, they were allowed to accede, because nobody had told them before this due date that they were not ready for accession. And of course, on paper it all looked very well - as it did when Greece got the euro - but once inside the Union, most reforms appeared to be window-dressing and the promised rule of law standards a Potemkin village. To regain credibility, also because of a growing skeptic public opinion inside the Union itself which is hostile to any further enlargement anyhow, Brussels now has to be more strict than ever about candidates that don't show up with the truth.