Guarded welcome for EU newcomers

PARIS - The ranks of the European Union are set to swell by two more members from next year but until the end of the decade at least other countries testing the door of the EU club are likely to find it jammed shut.

Romania and Bulgaria will join the EU ranks from January 1 under a decision announced in Strasbourg on Tuesday, but their membership is being tied to unprecedented conditions, reflecting a deep public disquiet.

The two Balkan countries were rostered in part two of the Union's "Big Bang", an enlargement that began in May 2004 by taking the membership roll from 15 to 25.

By many standards, the Big Bang has been a catastrophe. Most EU leaders signed up to it either to bathe in some brief euro-glory or because they had no choice - but almost none sold the deal effectively to their public.

As a result, enlargement became associated with unbridled immigration, as poor eastern Europeans headed to the wealthier West; with downward pressure on wages and loss of jobs as companies relocated east of the former Iron Curtain; with gangs and fraud; but above with all a public sense of helplessness.

That worry has been sharpened by the debacle of a proposed EU Constitution to streamline decision-making in a crowded 27-nation house. Dutch and French voters opposed the scheme last year, leaving it in limbo and the EU in institutional gridlock.

These are the reasons the EU has suddenly got tough with Romania and Bulgaria.

Eyeing those countries' notoriety for organised crime, corruption and poor safety standards, the European Commission said it would set down "specific benchmarks" in judicial reform, combating graft, meeting hygiene norms in the food industry and ensuring that EU funds are administered properly. Most member states are expected to impose restrictions on workers from Bulgaria and Romania after January 1.

Analysts say the measures have no precedent in the previous waves of enlargement which over half a century have taken the European project from six founder countries to 27 next year - an arc that will now extend from the Irish Atlantic coast to the Black Sea.

They say the measures are aimed largely at reassuring an unsettled and sceptical EU public. But the measures also signal to other EU hopefuls that the exuberant embrace they could have expected has been replaced by, at best, a brisk, businesslike handshake.