Core constituencies in the west - such as farmers and low-skilled industrial workers - resent the enlargement project. Anti-Slav prejudices run rampant in Italy, Austria and Germany. The incompatibilities are deepest. For instance, according to research recently published by the Pew Center, the new members are staunchly pro-American, though less so than ten years ago. In stark contrast, the veteran core of the EU is anti-American.
Many of the denizens of the candidate countries regard the EU as merely an extended Germany. It is the focus of numerous conspiracy theories, especially in the Balkan. The losers of the second world war - Japan and Germany - are out to conquer the world, this time substituting money for bullets.
Germany, insist the Serbs and the Macedonians - instigated the breakdown of the Yugoslav Federation to establish a subservient Croatia. Wasn't Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb dictator, ousted in favor of the German-educated Zoran Djindjic? - they exclaim triumphantly.
Germany is reasserting itself. United, it is the largest country in Europe and one of the richest. Its forces are keeping the fragile peace in Balkan hot spots, like Macedonia. It will contribute to the EU's long-heralded rapid reaction force. It owns the bulk of the, frequently overdue, sovereign debts of Russia, Ukraine and other east European countries.
One tenth of Germany's trade is with the candidate countries, a turnover comparable to its exchange with the United States. German goods constitute two fifths of all EU trade with the new members. Germans are the largest foreign direct investors throughout the region - from Hungary to Croatia. German banks compete with German-owned Austrian banks over control of the region's fledgling financial sector. The study of German as a second or third language has surged.
Last year alone, German corporations plunged $3.6 billion into the economies of the acceding countries. German multinationals like Volkswagen and Siemens employ almost 400,000 people in central Europe - for one tenth to one eighth their cost in the fatherland.
Quoted by the World Socialist, the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) estimates that the production costs in mechanical engineering and plant construction are 20 percent lower in Poland than in Germany, while quality is more or less the same.
Germany runs the EU rather single-handedly, though with concessions to a megalomaniacally delusional France. In September, the German and French leaders, meeting tte- -tte in a hotel, dictated to other members the fate, for the next 11 years, of half the EU's budget - the portion wasted on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Germany's hegemonic role is likely to be enhanced by enlargement. Many of the new members - e.g., the Czech Republic - depend on it economically. Others - like Hungary - share with it a common history. German is spoken in the majority of the candidates. They trade with Germany and German businessmen and multinational are heavily invested in their economies. A "German Bloc" within the EU is conceivable - unless Poland defects to the increasingly marginalized French or to the British.
Germany's federalist instincts - its express plan to create a "United States of Europe", central government and all - are, therefore, understandable, though spurned by the candidate countries. Germany is likely to press for even further enlargement to the east. The EU's commissioner for enlargement is a German, Gunter Verheugen.