Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-15-Speech-2-335"
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"en.20051115.28.2-335"2
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".
Mr President, firstly I should like to thank the honourable Members for their overall support for a carefully managed accession process, which aims to enhance stability, security, freedom and democracy in Europe. I also thank them for their feedback and pertinent questions.
Thirdly, Mr Wiersma, Mrs Pack, Mr Szent-Iványi and Mr Lagendijk made references to regional cooperation in the Western Balkans and progress made by individual countries. I would very much agree with Mr Wiersma that our conditionality works. Take Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance: there, the policy formed is very much a consequence of the conditions we set for that country in order to conclude a stabilisation and association agreement. Likewise for Serbia and Montenegro: the significant progress made in relation to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has been the result of our conditions for starting negotiations on the stabilisation and association agreement. We have to strike a careful balance between conditionality and rewarding progress as regards our candidate countries.
Next year, I hope we will see new moves for the Western Balkans. The Austrian Presidency is planning to hold a high-level event during its period in office in order to take stock and decide on the next moves as regards how to enhance political cooperation, economic development and citizens’ issues – such as visa facilitation – so that we can make the European perspective as concrete and tangible as possible for the citizens and the countries of the Western Balkans region.
I can assure you that the Commission will fully support the Austrian Presidency. I trust that the European Parliament will do the same. I am very much looking forward to working together with you. I count on your support for a carefully managed accession process of the Union.
I should like to speak on two or three main issues. I will group several comments or questions together in order to facilitate a more concise response.
Mr Brok, Mr Eurlings and others called for a balance to be struck between deepening and widening. I would certainly agree. It is the Commission’s policy to take care of both deepening and widening; both are important political objectives of the European Union. That is one reason why we have underlined the need to take into account the Union’s own capacity to absorb new members, so that any future enlargement will not weaken but strengthen the Union and will not make our decision-making weaker but stronger in the face of the major challenges that we are currently facing.
Looking at its recent history, the European Union has achieved the best progress when deepening and widening, if not hand-in-hand, then at least in parallel. Since 1989, since the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, we have deepened our political integration by creating the single market, the single currency and the Schengen arrangement on the free movement of people, and have reinforced the Common Foreign and Security Policy. At the same time, the Union has widened: our membership has more than doubled from 12 to 25. That parallel deepening and widening proves that it can be done and that it is also beneficial to the European Union.
In the near future, the continuation of constitutional reform is essential for the European Union, in my view, in order to make our decision-making more effective and efficient, to enhance democracy and openness, and to reinforce our common security and defence policy.
Concerning its relation to enlargement, we had better keep the time perspective in mind: we need solutions on constitutional reform relatively soon, in the next few years; we have to use the pause for reflection effectively; we also have to draw conclusions from the discussion and reflection and start acting.
We cannot wait for the conclusions of the negotiations with Turkey, which might take 10 to 15 years. That is, by far, too long a time perspective for our own internal challenges. Therefore, for the sake of Europe, we have to be able to solve our problems related to the financial perspectives or to our institutional questions long before the Western Balkans or Turkey join the European Union.
My second point concerns Kosovo. I can fully agree with Mr Swoboda that the best service the European Union can now provide so that the negotiations are successful and the settlement is sustainable is for us to be supportive but critical. The rule of law and the rights of minorities are at the heart of European values. Those values are fundamental to any progress on the European perspective on Kosovo or the Western Balkans.
The Commission’s role is to facilitate a balanced and sustainable settlement. We work closely with the international community and its Status Envoy, President Ahtisaari, in order to make sure that whatever the precise outcome of the status talks, it will be compatible with the European perspective on Kosovo and the Western Balkans."@en1
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