Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-16-Speech-2-216"
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"en.20060516.35.2-216"2
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"Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, reasonable accession agreements have been concluded for Bulgaria and Romania, and the Union was to have been enlarged to include these states from the first day of next year, but the deadline has again been thrown into doubt. Allow me to make a few observations from my own experience, on the grounds that we were under the same sort of pressure that Bulgaria and Romania face today prior to our accession to the Union. We too were told that the Czech Republic was not fully prepared, that it had not yet sufficiently fulfilled this or that requirement. The outcome is that we still do not enjoy the same conditions as the so-called old Member States. Furthermore, I would venture to add that more than one member of the old Union of 15 might find it difficult to meet the conditions offered, for example, to the Czech Republic.
The requirements placed on Bulgaria and Romania are tougher still. By casting doubt over their accession date and by imposing unequal terms we are increasing insecurity and providing ammunition to those forces in both states that oppose EU accession. In addition, we are creating for ourselves sharp internal divisions for the Union in the future, by which I do not mean to say, of course, that we should turn a blind eye to failures over tackling corruption in Bulgaria and Romania or to the issue of organised crime, any more than we should in other Member States. Yet it is not good for new states and their citizens to be joining the Union with the feeling that they are second-rate and unequal. In connection with this, I feel that it should not be our aim to bring about a repeat of the situation in the Czech Republic, where a majority of people, according to a public opinion survey, now believe that equality and justice do not prevail in the Union and that the so-called old Member States continue to enjoy advantages that are denied to the new Member States, in the form of subsidies that are withheld from the latter. In the case of Bulgaria and Romania we are, at the very least, going down the same route. I will give you one example of this. The Kozloduj nuclear power station – already mentioned several times – is just as safe as many others in Europe, according to international experts. The Union, however, is obliging Bulgaria as a condition of entry to shut down part of its nuclear capacity, which will turn it from an exporter of electricity into an importer. The question is who really benefits from this. When all is said and done, we have raised the hopes of the inhabitants of Bulgaria and Romania regarding membership of the Union and we should therefore not treat them like hostages and quibble over their accession date. It is possible that we, as Member States with our own economic interests, might have more cause for regret than Bulgaria and Romania if the enlargement does not take place by 1 January."@en1
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