Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-13-Speech-3-047"
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"en.20061213.4.3-047"2
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"Mr President, Mr Stubb said that enlargement has been the most successful EU policy, spreading stability, peace and prosperity across our continent.
That logic still applies. Of course it means that the European Union must adapt, especially in terms of institutional reform. However, does it mean that we should block any enlargement until all institutional reforms have been achieved? If that were the case, the last enlargement would never have happened, because the Treaty of Nice was clearly insufficient. Perhaps even the 1973 enlargement might not have happened.
The fact is that enlargement is one of the factors that drive reform. Some Member States that are reluctant to embrace institutional reform often accept its necessity as a consequence of enlargement. Therefore supporters of reform should be supporters of enlargement. Yet Mr Méndez de Vigo said that there should be no future enlargements without the Constitutional Treaty. Indeed, paragraph 9 of Mr Stubb’s report states that ‘any enlargement requires...’ – and then there is a long list of items that are all contained in the Constitutional Treaty. We have a slight difficulty with that absolute position.
Mr Brok said that those who push hardest for widening are often those who oppose deepening. Yet if you want to force both, you need to press for both. There is a real danger that, on the one hand, you will have people who say that they do not want enlargement until we have institutional reform and, on the other, you will have those who say that we do not need institutional reform until we have enlargement. If you want to drive forward both agendas you need to support both, because it is both that will drive us forward to having an enlarged and a reformed European Union.
That is why our group has tabled an amendment to paragraph 9 to make it clear that we do not see as a precondition having every single part of an institutional agenda accepted before any single enlargement takes place. We believe that the two processes – enlargement and reform – will go together; they will drive each other forward and they may, perhaps, end up being enacted on the same day – a new treaty and an accession treaty perhaps rolled into one."@en1
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