Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-241"
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"en.20060315.21.3-241"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, speaking as chairperson of the delegation for South-Eastern Europe, let me say that I wholeheartedly endorse what Mr Brok’s report has to say about each individual country and what it demands of them. Each of them has its own particular problems and needs to be judged on the basis of its own achievements, and so it would be highly desirable for consideration to be given to Croatia’s accession at an early date. To do so would send an important message of stabilisation to the entire region, since Croatia's achievements in both the political and economic spheres are in no respect inferior to those of the next two accession countries.
Now, though, that we are coming to the close of the debate, I want to address an idea – one that is concealed in the Brok report, but more prominent in the public media. I refer to the allusions to changes in the enlargement strategy. The question is asked as to where the borders of the EU are, but nobody is answering it. Commissioner Rehn himself said earlier on that this is a question that has to be answered, and it is precisely this that has the public worried. My personal view is that the accessions of Bulgaria, Romania and the countries of the Western Balkans will mean that the EU will have reached its limits. For all the other countries, we have devised the new instrument of the Neighbourhood Policy and must get to grips with it. The rushed negotiations with Turkey have done what remained to be done to make our citizens insecure and disoriented.
For ten years we have been saying that there must be no enlargement without institutional reform of the EU, but the Council did not begin to do justice to that until after the last enlargement, and for that we were all punished by the results of the referendums in France and the Netherlands. But it would be fatal if we were, on that basis, to draw the conclusion that no further accessions must be allowed. We must waste no time in laying hold of the necessary instruments, for which, of course, the Constitutional Treaty makes provision, and use them to restore our capacity to welcome new members. If we do not want to jeopardise what has been up to now our great commitment to the Balkans, we must remain consistent and purposeful in continuing to bring these countries closer to the EU.
I very much welcome what both Commissioner Rehn and Mrs Plassnik have had to say on this subject. All these states were rightly promised accession to the EU subject to their fulfilling the criteria. That was and remains an important motor for change in the aftermath of the terrible conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and of Ever Hoxha’s dictatorship in Albania. It is apparent to any rational person who even casts a glance at a map that this region is in the middle of the EU. If it enjoys stability, then so do we. The 1990s saw us all experiencing and suffering the opposite of that, but I do fear – and I can tell the President-in-Office of the Council that the vagueness and imprecision of what was said in Salzburg gives me reason to – that certain Europeans are intent on leaving the South-East European states in the lurch a second time, and that is what we cannot allow to happen."@en1
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