Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-03-Speech-2-199"

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"en.20001003.5.2-199"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, many of the Members have already pointed out that enlargement is a major, ambitious goal. I would like to add that it is also a moral duty of Western Europe: 11 years ago, the Soviet system came to an end and the countries involved turned to us in hope. We must respond to this hope with generosity and farsightedness. Certainly, we must not disregard the difficulties involved in the project. For our part, we must implement the institutional reforms and they, on their side, must carry out major internal reforms respecting the Copenhagen and other criteria. In this respect, I would mention the amendments tabled by Mrs Oostlander to the reports on the Czech Republic and on Slovenia, calling for the issues regarding the minorities, which have not yet been resolved, to be tackled. I refer, for example, to the long drawn-out dispute involving the Italian community in Slovenia. In addition to the details and more specific issues, we must not lose sight of the historic import of this process. The debate which has been developing recently has thrown up four key issues: the date for the conclusion of negotiations, the accession date, the order in which the new countries are to join the Union and the transitional periods. My Group announced its desire to see the first negotiations concluded by 2003, making accession possible by June 2004. Certainly, the debate over the order in which the countries are to join the Union remains open, partly because the state of progress of their internal reforms will have to be assessed. I would consider it wise to adopt a solution which is a good compromise between an enlargement process which is not too spread out over time, which would certainly prove traumatic for our institutions, and an enlargement process which takes into account the legitimate timetabling expectations of the countries. As regard the transitional periods, I feel that we must be careful not to fall into the temptation to use them to reduce the impact of enlargement, thus detracting from the fact that the new countries belong to the European Union, in an endeavour to comply with the timetable we have set ourselves. On the other hand, it is true that these transitional periods can, if granted appropriately and in moderation, with great transparency, balance and a sense of accountability, prove to be in the general interest of all the countries."@en1

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