“Outside, Estonia would have to adopt EU-mandated laws. Inside, Estonia is an equal partner and can affect the nature of those laws.”

CITY PAPER: How do you react to arguments paralleling the EU and the Soviet Union? I don’t believe arguments based on the occurrence of the same word union in two words—Soviet Union and European Union. The use of the word in the former case is—or more properly was—a travesty. Before the Red Army invaded in 1940, the Soviet Union did not spend years scrutinizing Estonia’s qualifications for joining. It did not have heated internal debates on whether Estonia was capable of incorporating the Soviet legal system or implementing its laws.

CITY PAPER: Doesn’t the EU’s tendency towards bureaucracy and centralization have some similarity to the Soviet system?
“The large EU bureaucracy” is a (cliché). Brussels employs about 10,000 officials to administer the 300-million-large EU. That’s less than the number administering Tallinn.
      The issue of centralization is double-edged: People want Brussels to pay for roads, agricultural and environmental projects. That’s to say, people want other people’s money to be used to pay for local projects. Yet someone has to administer other people’s money and ensure it’s equitably distributed. How can this be done without a centralized authority? If we don’t like the centralized administration of other people’s money, we shouldn’t ask other people to pay for our projects.

CITY PAPER: Many EU backers tend to be clear about the security value of being in the EU—but seem more hesitant when asked to name two or three big economic benefits. What would you say are the main economic benefits of EU entry?
Crudely put: it’s simple arithmetic. Estonia and other poor new members will receive about 4 percent of their GDP in the form of EU subsidies. We will pay in 1.27 percent of our GDP. Do the math: 2.73 percent of Estonia’s GDP, regardless of what we do, will come from the EU. Development of road infrastructure, clean-up of the environment, rural development projects and everything else that comes from EU assistance will make Estonia a more competitive, richer country. The experience of Ireland, Spain and Portugal attests to this.

CITY PAPER: Will the benefits make up for what Estonia loses? Won’t it lose its reputation as having one of the world’s freest economies as it adopts EU-mandated laws, taxes and tariffs?
How much this free-market reputation translates into GDP is a good question. But the sad truth is that whether we’re in or out, a nation that has 75 percent of its trade with the EU has to harmonize almost all of its legislation with the EU anyway—as non-EU Norway had to do. Outside, Estonia would have to adopt EU-mandated laws. Inside, Estonia is an equal partner and can affect the nature of those laws.

CITY PAPER: How do you respond to charges Estonia, also during your tenure, has rushed to get into the EU, as someone said, without knowing where this EU train’s going?
Another round of enlargement after the current one won’t occur for some time. How will Estonia react when it’s outside the EU, and Latvia and Lithuania are in—with the result that 90 percent of our trade will be with an economic entity whose policies we have no say in and whose laws we have to follow anyway? How will Estonia react when Latvia and Lithuania get huge subsidies as members and Estonia, having opted out, loses even the small EU assistance we now receive? How will Estonia fare when, as a rejectionist country, it’s faced with the same EU tariffs applied to other non-EU countries?
       As far as the EU train, the tracks are being laid now at the European Future Convention—with the participation of Estonia and other candidate countries.

CITY PAPER: Are you confident Estonians will say yes to membership, presumably in a referendum next year?
I can’t predict the future. Latest polls show 58 percent of Estonians favor joining, while a year ago we were the most eurosceptical of candidate nations. Much can change in a year, so I wouldn’t want to speculate.

Also on this site, see related article—EuroDoubts.
 
                                                         —CITY PAPER-The Baltic States