Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-25-Speech-3-261"
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"en.20091125.21.3-261"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, this is a truly important debate on a truly important subject. Still, if I wished, I could limit my intervention today to just saying that the Presidency is in full agreement with the motion for a resolution that has been put forward by Mr Albertini on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. It is important that Parliament and the Council, as well as the Commission, stand together on an issue as critical as this one.
There have been both the difficulties of the new members implementing our ever increasing policies and
and our difficulties in adjusting to our own success in the form of new members, but when we look back, it is easy to see that periods of enlargement have been periods in which we have also deepened our cooperation.
During the past two decades, we have more than doubled the number of Member States and, in rapid succession, we got the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon. The previous three decades did not even succeed in fully implementing the Treaty of Rome.
Article 49 is as important, I would argue, to our future as it has been to our past. Our magnetism is still there. During the last year, we have had new membership applications from Montenegro, Albania and Iceland, and there are others that we all know that are equally keen on reaching the position where an application can be handed in.
After the last enlargement that brought in approximately 100 million new citizens to our Union, our attention is now focused on the countries of south-eastern Europe – perhaps up to 100 million citizens as well.
This will be neither fast nor easy. The different challenges we face in the different countries of the western Balkans are well known, and the magnitude of the transformation of Turkey has not escaped us either.
We are all aware that there are those in our respective public opinions that would prefer just to shut the door to all of them, hoping that the issue will go away, and who opt for a more closed idea of Europe.
I belong to those who are convinced that this would be a mistake of historic proportions, the consequences of which would haunt our Europe for a very long time to come.
Their door to our Union might sometimes be a very distant one. Some of them will have to travel a long and difficult road of reforms, but, were that door to be shut, other doors would immediately open up to other forces, and we might well see those parts of Europe moving off in directions which, over time, will have negative consequences for us all.
That is why Article 49 remains of such fundamental importance. It is the beacon of reform and reconciliation that also inspires and guides the regions of Europe that are not yet members of our Union.
Commissioner Rehn will go into more details concerning the Commission’s assessment of the progress of all these countries concerned, and the Presidency does share the assessment made by the Commission.
In retrospect, perhaps the most crucial of all the Articles in that treaty that was signed on the Capitol Hill in Rome more than half a century ago was what today is Article 49 in the Lisbon Treaty: any European state which respects our values and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union.
It remains our ambition to move all of the countries of the western Balkans forward in the accession process, knowing that they are at very different stages of it. We expect, somewhat related to this, a decision to be taken that from 19 December, there will be visa-free access to our Union for the citizens of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. That is a major and most important step forward.
Along with Parliament, we share the hope that Albania and Bosnia will catch up and will be able to join this most important step as soon as possible.
The accession process of Croatia has been unblocked and is now moving forward. This is important for Croatia and for the entire region. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has been given a very positive report by the Commission, and it is my hope that the Council in December will be able to concretely indicate further steps in its accession process.
The applications of Montenegro and Albania have been forwarded to the Commission and I believe we can expect its opinion within a year or so.
In Bosnia, it is our hope that the political leaders will be able to agree on the reforms necessary in order to make it possible for that country as well to contemplate an application for membership. Indirect talks facilitated by the European Union and the United Sates in close cooperation are under way as we speak today.
Serbia has been making good progress on its unilateral implementation of the interim agreement, and we will obviously look very carefully at the upcoming report by the ICTY Chief Prosecutor concerning its cooperation with its efforts. It is our hope that he is satisfied with the current level of efforts, although it is, of course, also critical that these efforts are maintained.
Moving further to the south-east, I would like to pay tribute to the fundamental reforms under way in Turkey on the Kurdish question. The success of these would bring the country much closer to our European standards in areas of fundamental importance.
There are numerous other issues which I think the Commissioner will go into. Not directly related but also of obvious significance in this regard are the ongoing talks between President Christofias and Mr Talat on the reunification of Cyprus. We can only urge them to move forward towards a comprehensive solution on the basis of a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation with political equality in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions. The importance of this can hardly be exaggerated.
We will move either towards a new era of reconciliation and cooperation in this part of Europe and the entire region of the eastern Mediterranean, or towards a situation where it is easy to see that we will be faced with rapidly mounting problems.
Much of our attention is on the challenges of south-eastern Europe, but the application of Iceland is adding to the reasons we have to focus more of our attention on all the issues of the Arctic and the wider high North. This is an area where our Union must also be more present and engaged in the future. Its importance is coming more and more into the focus of all the significant global actors and the application of Iceland should also be seen from that perspective.
It is by this that 19 of the countries of our Union today have become members and part of the historic undertaking of our Union. It is by this Article that we have managed to promote peace and prosperity and further the rule of law and representative government in ever larger parts of this once so conflict-ridden part of the world.
With a democratic tradition that reaches back a thousand years or so, and with its membership in our single market through the European Economic Area, it is obvious that Iceland has already travelled quite a bit on the road to membership, although we will have to assess the further progress when we get the
from the Commission.
Mr President, this is what the Swedish Presidency has so far managed to achieve in the important area of enlargement. We still have some important weeks in which I expect further progress, but let me conclude by saying that I do not believe that we have completed the building of our Europe. I do believe that we must remain an open Europe and that we should remain committed to an enlargement process that brings good governance, the rule of law, reconciliation, peace and prosperity to larger and larger parts of our Europe.
This is obviously of key importance to them, but we should recognise that it is of key importance to us as well, and let us not forget that it will also make it possible for us to stand taller in the world and for our voice to demand even greater respect in the future.
Sometimes you need to go to other parts of the world, as I have the duty to do quite often, to be reminded of how enormous this achievement really is.
During more than half a century, our Europe exported wars and totalitarian ideologies across the rest of the globe. Two world wars; two totalitarian ideologies; strife and suffering.
Now, we are instead exporting the idea of peaceful reconciliation, of integration across old borders, of common rules and regulations as the common way to better governance. Add to this all that has been achieved by Article 49 and it also makes our Union stand taller in the world.
A Europe of 6, of 9, of 12, of 15 or even of 25 would have been smaller in every single respect – in ambition, in standing, in possibilities, in respect across the globe.
Your resolution is surely right to say that enlargement, and I quote, ‘has proven to be one of the most successful of all European Union policies’. This is, if anything, an understatement.
We all know that the process has not been entirely easy. I remember coming in a different capacity to an earlier European Parliament representing a country seeking accession and also meeting those who feared that further enlargement from the then 12 would risk diluting the political ambitions of the Union."@en1
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