Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-13-Speech-3-009"
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"en.20061213.4.3-009"2
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".
Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, it was in the spring of this year that this House asked the Commission to produce a report on the capacity to integrate the new Member States; that report appeared on 8 November, but it is not one that we regard as adequate.
Up to now, enlargement has been one of the most successful aspects of the European Union’s policy, with the area of peace, stability and positive economic development being substantially extended and contributing to the reunification of Europe. We also know that, in candidate countries and also in others in Europe, the prospect of EU membership is a vital element in the process of reforming the state, and both these positive considerations must always be borne in mind.
Even so, we have to be aware, now that enlargement is bringing us to a total of twenty-seven Member States – with the possibility of Croatia soon making their number twenty-eight – of the need to give thought to the future of the European project. Do we want the European Union to be a political project in the true sense of the word, possessing the capacity to act, the ability to play a global role in dealing with issues of foreign and security policy, combating terrorism and organised crime, something for which it needs to be ready to act, or do we want it to drift along as an economic project? Clear answers must be found to these questions.
It must be clear to us that the present institutional constitution of the European Union will get us nowhere. It is because the Constitutional Treaty was intended for the last enlargement that that last enlargement must be completed and consolidated before we start thinking seriously about more big schemes, if we ourselves are not to wreck our own project. That is why the Constitutional Treaty does, to some degree, impose conditions, and Mr Stubb will have more to say about this.
There are still other questions that we have to address, questions to which unambiguous answers must be found, questions as to the direction in which we are journeying, perhaps in connection with the next review clause and the Financial Perspective scheduled for 2008/2009, in order that we may know which enlargement shall have what consequences for the European project. There are, in any case, many areas – agricultural policy, structural policy, and so on – in which things cannot carry on the way they are now. What consequences result for certain Member States, how much less money will they get, and how much more will others have to pay? All these things have to be sorted out if the project is to be proceeded with in a serious way.
It is perfectly clear that the undertakings we have given – for example those given to the states of the Western Balkans at Thessaloniki – have to be acted upon. Nobody in this House is calling for negotiations currently underway to be broken off; we know that time is of the essence and that it is because Croatia is waiting on the threshold that the Heads of State or Government have to move the process forward, but we also have to spell out the fact that full membership is not at every stage and in every single case, whether immediately or in the long term, the only means whereby we can make countries’ European prospect tangible in a credible way. It is for these reasons that questions arise concerning development and neighbourhood policy, or questions concerning multilateral coalitions of states for which European Union membership is a prospect, the idea being that their peoples should get something now and not just in fifteen years’ time with the conclusion of negotiations that have not even begun yet. When I say, then, that we must develop a much more imaginative approach, I am thinking only of the example of Ukraine, where, regrettably, a great deal of time was lost, and that to our own disadvantage. That such countries should have a European perspective is in our interests and not only in theirs, and that is a reason why we must do something, but it has to be clear to us that, if we enlarge the EU despite making no headway in its internal development, we will end up with an inner circle, with members of the European Union being divided into first and second class. To sum it up in a slogan, we are faced with the choice between the constitution and Verhofstadt, for that, too, is a possible consequence. It is the countries that are particularly insistent on enlargement that are the very same ones who want to slow down or stop the process whereby the European Union becomes deeper, and I myself have doubts about their credibility.
As regards Turkey, we have joined with a number of colleagues in proposing a formula in response to the new development, and I hope that it will work. It is to be regretted that Turkey’s legal obligations have not been met and that yet another delay has occurred, although it has to be said that, on the other hand, breaking off the negotiations would have been the wrong way to go about things. That must not mean, however, that Turkey need not discharge these obligations in the long term."@en1
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