Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-25-Speech-2-162"
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"en.20051025.20.2-162"2
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"Mr President, the June List will welcome Romania and Bulgaria as Members of the European Union in the same way as we shall welcome Turkey, the countries of the Western Balkans and, in time, Ukraine and, hopefully, Belarus. What, however, is at issue is the timetable, for this is important. I wish to sound a warning about the problems that will be faced by the EU if, over a very short period, we accept as Members a large number of countries that are poor and economically undeveloped, that have little experience of democracy and of government under the rule of law and that have major problems involving corruption.
Even the enlargement involving 10 countries that has just been carried out and of which the June List has been a strong supporter is giving rise to problems. To now accept poor countries such as Romania and Bulgaria into an EU that continues to be encumbered by an absurd agricultural policy and a badly managed structural policy and that is grappling with difficulties in preventing waste and corruption in its own system would be dangerous for the future of the European project.
We must ask ourselves at what stage a country should become a fully-fledged Member State. Is development quickest when a candidate country is making efforts to obtain approval or after it has become a Member? I believe that the pressure to improve democracy, human rights, the judicial system and public administration and to set up a functioning market economy is strongest, on the one hand, before membership negotiations have begun and, on the other, before the country has been accepted as a Member.
The Commission’s report on the state of things in Romania and Bulgaria is unconvincing on these different points. We find a key sentence to the effect that developments have been inadequate in a number of areas, and the Commission provides long lists of what has not been done in terms of infrastructure, organised crime, tax systems and the treatment of minorities. In this situation, membership for both countries should be postponed until a later date. This would be in the long-term interests of both the European Union and the two candidate countries."@en1
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