Parliament's report on slowing down further enlargement of the EU

09.04.2008, 18:42

The European Parliament is preparing a report that argues in favour of significantly slowing down the process of further enlargement of the EU, warning that hurried expansion will lead to a fragmented Union.

Prepared for the foreign affairs committee by German centre-right MEP Elmar Brok, the draft report, which is due to be voted on in committee in May and by the wider plenary following month, says: "Further enlargement without adequate consolidation could lead to a Union of multiple configurations, with core countries moving towards closer integration and others lying at its margins." It also suggest that aspiring EU members should be offered a wider choice of political relations with the EU.

At the moment, the EU offers only full membership or a neighbourhood policy - a neighbourly agreement without much political bite.

Enlargement strategy should "be flanked by a more diversified range of external contractual frameworks." Countries could then graduate to more integrated agreements if they fulfilled certain conditions.

The report welcomes France's plans for a Union for the Mediterranean, seeing it as a way of binding southern countries to the EU and offers eastern neighbours - which have a "clear" European perspective - a sort of half-way house between full membership and the current neighbourhood policy.

This could take the form of a "European Commonwealth."

Despite the proposal for a stronger political relationship with the EU, the report's emphasis on its own ability to absorb new member states represents a blow to countries such as Ukraine and Georgia which have been strongly lobbying Brussels for hints that they can eventually join the club.

Turkey, as a candidate EU member, is also not happy with the report, and is lobbying to have it altered. In an apparent veiled reference to Turkey - which is large and poor - the report says that each new member state could have an "impact" on Union policies and the budget and "affect the nature of the Union itself."

According to a European Parliament official, the enlargement-wary report has received broad cross-party backing by MEPs from several pre-2004 member states in the committee.

However, MEPs from newer member states who favour Ukraine's EU membership do not like its tone.

At a recent hearing in the European parliament on the issue, Andres Kasekamp, director of the Estonian foreign policy unit, said: "The history of previous enlargements proves that widening versus deepening is a false dilemma."

"Enlargement has always been a catalyst for strengthening the functions and institutions of the Union," he noted adding that the EU, while no longer a "cosy club", is "functioning adequately."

At the moment, two countries have candidate status to join the EU - Croatia and Turkey, while Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina have all been promised EU membership in the long run.

Source: EUobserver.com

Menu

Random image

House of multiregional cooperation

Parliament's report on slowing down further enlargement of the EU