Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Part V
In this penultimate section of four chapters, the candidates for EU membership - Bulgaria, Romania,
Turkey and Croatia - are examined. While the first two had entered membership negotiations in
the 1990s and had been included within the group of 12 candidates for possible accession in 2004,
they were found not to be able to meet fully the Copenhagen criteria, but were encouraged to con-
tinue pursuing their full implementation. Despite Ankara's considerable history of seeking a closer
relationship with the EU, not until October 2005 did the EU member states agree that both Turkey
and Croatia could now enter into accession negotiations. That this took place on the same day rep-
resents one of the many important symbolic elements of the EU trajectory. For it was in the 1520s,
as Ottoman armies were overwhelming the Kingdom of Croatia, that the Pope sent a message to
the Croatian parliament, urging it to continue to resist, and extolling Croats as the 'ramparts of
Christendom' (Tanner, 1997; Hall, 2000).
Just as a founding objective of the EEC in the 1950s was to bring France and Germany into a
core partnership within a wider community that would remove the possibility of conflict within
Western Europe, so successive enlargements have acted to wipe away past - and often ancient -
animosities, rivalries and conflicts, whether cultural, ideological or territorial (or indeed all three). In
this respect alone, the EU member states' attitude towards the speed and nature of the Union's
enlargement has taken on a global significance, not least in terms of the signals it conveys to
non-European as well as to domestic audiences. The EU is not a white, Christian, European club,
and tourism is one of the contexts in which the richness and importance of (multi-)cultural heritage
and its relationship with European citizenship and identity can be expressed (Chapter 3). Debates
on the accession of Turkey to the EU thus appear fundamental to an evolving conception of
'Europe' and the appropriateness of this conception in a globalizing world that confronts
man-made and natural potential disaster.
As a brief introductory overview of the candidates, this short piece aims to address their
commonalities and contrasts, and to reflect on the significance for tourism of their likely accession to
the EU.
Commonalities
There are two, perhaps interrelated, obvious commonalities that the candidates share. Geographi-
cally, all four are located in south-eastern Europe, although this needs qualification. First, of course,
