Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-04-Speech-2-060"
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"en.20010904.3.2-060"2
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".
Madam President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, it is almost a year since the European Parliament’s last major debate on enlargement. I therefore welcome the opportunity to take stock of the year and describe the tasks that still lie ahead of us.
The President-in-Office has already indicated how much progress we have made in the negotiations. I can, in fact, confirm that the question of the substance of the individual chapters is more important than the mere compilation of figures. It is quite possible that countries which have concluded fewer chapters than others are nevertheless further on in their preparations.
I should like to begin by sincerely thanking the European Parliament and all its groups and committees for their great commitment to the process of EU enlargement. You have all done a great deal to give this historic project political credibility and to give democratic legitimacy to the enlargement process. In the decisive closing stage of negotiations the Commission continues to rely on Parliament’s support, and I am pleased to be able to say, on the basis of the contribution from Mr Brok, the rapporteur, and the presentation from the President-in-Office, that there continues to be a high level of broad solid agreement between the three institutions, Parliament, the Council and the Commission.
After the Councils of Nice and Göteborg it is clear that enlargement will come, and come soon. The point of no return is definitely behind us. The project is now irreversible. I do not want to reawaken the controversy surrounding the Treaty of Nice, but I would like to point out that this Treaty contains essential political conditions for the conclusion of the accession treaties. I, too, have my doubts as to whether the treaty is the best possible solution both to the question of institutional adjustments and to that of the combination of deepening and enlargement that many, myself included, believe necessary. But I fear there will always be differences of opinion over the best possible solution to this problem. But living in Europe means living with compromises. The Commission is therefore pressing for ratification of the Treaty of Nice here in the European Parliament and in the parliaments of the Member States.
As we all know, the treaty fell at the first hurdle, the referendum in Ireland. The answer to such a referendum cannot be a simple “as you were”. If we simply close our eyes and continue, we shall be shipwrecked and miss out on a great historic opportunity. Enlargement must not be sacrificed to growing alienation between Europe’s citizens and the European institutions and decision-making processes. The answer to the warning signal from Ireland is also, but not only, a question of proper communication. Perhaps Europe’s citizens are looking for a more fundamental and more complex answer. As I see it, there is an intrinsic link between the debate about Europe’s future and the debate about our future borders. We need to make that link.
Nice has paved the way for negotiations to be steered towards the really substantive questions, as the candidates urgently require. The ‘road map’ presented by the Commission and approved by the Heads of State and Government is more than a timetable for negotiations. At heart it is a commitment by the 15 Member States to find common positions by particular deadlines, even in areas where interests are widely divergent. At the same time, this tells the candidates that their efforts are worthwhile and that nothing is being put off.
After almost a year, we can say that the Nice strategy has motivated the candidate countries enormously and that the transposition of Community law is running more quickly and more smoothly. At the same time, the candidate countries are showing greater flexibility in adjusting their positions and there have been genuine breakthroughs in negotiations as a result. The treatment of the free movement of workers issue is an instructive example of this.
The desired time frame for the first accessions was then clearly defined in Göteborg. That came at the right moment. On the one hand, the progress in negotiations made it possible to define the finishing line for those applicant countries that are adequately prepared; on the other hand, the Göteborg decision gives the parliaments and governments of the candidate countries the necessary political tailwind to mobilise all their forces and respond to the doubters that most certainly exist.
Making the 2004 European elections the point of reference for the accessions is an idea that originated here in the European Parliament a year ago. We reached agreement on it in our debate last year. I am very pleased that we actually managed to follow the way pointed by the European Parliament at the Councils in Nice and Göteborg. I believe it was a wise decision not to set any specific accession dates for individual countries at Göteborg or to define groups for accession. The basic principles of the process – namely individual merits, differentiation and the chance to catch up – are working. If we stick to these principles, we shall arrive at a natural and real accession scenario that is justified by the results of negotiations alone. The Commission will be sticking to this line resolutely. I am also saying this to counter the view that in the end the decisions taken will be purely political, political here in the bad sense of the word.
The Commission will not propose the conclusion of an accession treaty for each individual applicant until it is convinced that the applicant is well enough prepared and satisfies all the conditions. I am not therefore going to speculate today about how many, and which, new members will already be represented in the next European Parliament. All I can say today is that 10 of the 12 countries we are negotiating with have decided that they want to use the Göteborg time frame. It would be a serious breach of trust if we were now to say to individual candidates: “You are in, in any event” or “Whatever happens, you are going to have to wait a little longer”. We shall therefore have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we might have to accept an initial accession group of as many as 10 applicants. That sounds more drastic that it actually is, because those 10 together represent around 75 million citizens, while all 13 candidate countries together make up a population of 185 million."@en1
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