Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-16-Speech-2-207"
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"en.20060516.35.2-207"2
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"Mr President, the pioneers of the European Union started with six states, mainly under the direct sphere of influence of Brussels and Strasbourg. Nobody could then seriously foresee that these European communities would grow into an overarching cooperative of 27 or more European states. Since the early 70s, those pioneers have nonetheless managed, gradually, to build a monopoly position when dealing with European states. States that used to belong to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) or the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) now form part of the European Union. The forthcoming accession of Romania and Bulgaria more or less puts the finishing touches to this development.
It would benefit their membership if this enlargement could partly be explained as a victory in the Cold War against the old adversary. This will yield support that would otherwise not be there. It was partly for that reason that this Parliament decided last year that those two states that were not ready with the preparations in 2004 should still be admitted in 2007 or 2008. I was one of those who voted in favour of that idea.
Despite this, the domestic situation of those two newcomers has come in for some widespread criticism. To this day, Roma people are driven out and their houses razed to the ground. To this day, nature and the environment are under more serious threat there than in other parts of Europe because motorways are built and minerals extracted in the cheapest ways possible. There is still no ready insight into the way governments spend their money and the companies that benefit from this. There are also doubts about the judiciary’s independence and objectivity. There are still ethnic peoples who feel they are being treated as second-class citizens, and people are still leaving those countries in their droves.
The odds are, then, that their accession, will, with the benefit of hindsight, be seen as a huge mistake and a failure. Whilst those shortcomings may not change anything about their membership, they will generate additional arguments against further enlargement. The first country that will be at the receiving end of this is Croatia, a country that already meets those criteria better than Romania and Bulgaria, and has much in common with current Member State Slovenia, but may have to wait for a very long time nevertheless. That is even more the case for the candidatures of other countries such as Macedonia, the rest of the Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine. How can we stave off such a negative outcome? Sustained solidarity may be better served with more active support in order for those countries to be brought up to speed quicker than the swift admission or more free market.
In the Dutch Parliament, both my party, the Socialist Party, and the Christian Democrats, have concluded that the risks of enlargement in 2007 are too great."@en1
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