Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-13-Speech-3-065"
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"en.20061213.4.3-065"2
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"Speaking also on behalf of my colleague Pál Schmitt, chairman of the delegation to the EU-Croatia joint parliamentary committee, I congratulate Mr Brock and Mr Stubb for their excellent and realistic report.
We Hungarians are glad that the reports strengthen the Copenhagen principle according to which each state wishing to join must proceed towards negotiations on its own merits. Accordingly, in the case of Croatia, presently engaged in negotiations, we can declare with confidence that we will welcome them as new members in this wave, on the basis of the Copenhagen criteria. In fact, Croatia’s entry is essentially the completion of the fifth wave of EU enlargement, that of the Central European region. Croatia is linked to this wave mainly through Slovenia, Austria and Hungary, by its level of development, by its legal and institutional culture and by its thousand-year-old heritage.
On another level, Croatia may serve as a good example for states wishing to begin the enlargement of the European Union in the Western Balkans. Fortunately Croatia’s admission, given its size and development, does not present problems with regard to either the internal market or the budget. As for the institutional conditions for accession, these can be fulfilled by amending the Treaty of Nice, a task that, in the absence of a Constitution, will have to be addressed eventually for purposes of accession.
At the same time, the principle of specific merits and further enlargement really need to be examined more seriously, henceforth in the Western Balkans as well as within the Union. That is the case as regards Croatia’s neighbour, Serbia, which entertains great hopes and where the northern province of Voivodina may serve as a bridge precisely on account of its western roots. It could keep playing this bridging role if Serbia were to strive to preserve the region instead of continuing its present practice of suppressing the traditional culture of indigenous EU peoples. If the latter continues, then rather than a European Union based on our own cultural values, we will instead be looking at a Byzantine Union."@en1
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