Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-230"
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"en.20060315.21.3-230"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, right up to the present day, the enlargement of the European Union has been the most successful aspect of its foreign policy, for it was a means of extending the area of stability and peace in Europe, and also of further advancing the cause of peace, freedom, human rights and the rule of law. This is an important point, and one of which we must not lose sight either now or in the future.
It also has to be clear to us, though, that stability is an achievable goal only if the European Union is strong enough to develop the ability to master these tasks; that, for example, was why the Constitutional Treaty was a retrospective attempt at really making the addition of ten new Member States workable in institutional terms and in terms of the objectives involved, and the reason why we are in such difficulties now is that the ratification process is going nowhere.
We also have to realise that the European Union's capacity for accepting new members is one of the essential aspects of the Copenhagen criteria, although there are good reasons why that has been purely declaratory in nature. When we reach the sort of interface that we will reach after Bulgaria and Romania we will, however, have to bring this into play and redefine it. It is for that reason that we ask the Commission, by the end of the year, to define what is meant by the European Union’s absorption capacity with reference to this and this will enable us to make use of it. What makes that so extraordinarily important is that this is not just a constitutional issue but also touches on issues of the European Union’s financial capacities and much more besides.
I also think that we have to make it clear to just what extent the European Union is capable of accepting new members, and that this can affect the ‘yes or no?’ decision at the end of the day. The prospect of EU membership is to be held out not only to countries that have already commenced accession negotiations, that have candidate status or to whom one has been promised post-Thessaloniki – which promise, let me point out for the avoidance of former doubts and in order to re-clarify matters, cannot be withdrawn – but also as an incentive to highly-important internal reforms and to such states as Ukraine, European states that are currently subject to dictatorships and need to have such a perspective if they are to be kept looking westwards.
For that, the Neighbourhood Policy alone is not enough. In some instances, the countries themselves or the European Union itself are currently finding it too much to combine this with the prospect of full membership, for it can in many cases be realised only in fifteen years’ time. If this project is to be credible, something between the two is needed, something with which these countries can have the prospect of full membership held out to them, without us being put under unrealistic pressure to give it to them at once.
This should be open to every state that is not currently a Member State of the European Union. I would like again to emphasise that this can be the final stretch in countries such as Norway – which is also a party to the Schengen convention – so decide on the basis of their participation in the European Economic Area. If I may be permitted to talk in terms of a ‘European Economic Area plus’, then there is much that can be done with such a multilateral project in the fields of the internal market, internal and external security, environmental policy and much else besides.
It can also be an intermediate stage, though. If states that, today, have the prospect of accession held out to them post-Thessaloniki – such as for example the countries of the Western Balkans, whose development is expected to take different periods of time – should decide to use it as an interim stage to full membership, then what was promised at Thessaloniki would not be made void. It is on this basis that we can achieve a new degree of flexibility by making this prospect credible, for things can happen at once without the intervening fifteen years of negotiations, and then we will have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
So, yes, I do see that enlargement, in some countries, entails plebiscites, and so we have no idea whether ratification will eventually happen. What that means is that this is not just an attempt at an ‘everything or nothing’ strategy, but also at creating ways in which these countries might be given credible perspectives, while at the same time saving and driving forward the political project that is the European Union."@en1
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