EU-enlargement: debate not closed

For the European Green Party countries beyond the Western Balkans only have a European perspective on the very long term, they decided during their second congress in Geneva. But the enlargement debate is not closed. The EU enlargement is one of the elements of the Green Future for Europe, the political programme that will be the EGP’s guideline for the European elections of 2009. The text puts countries beyond the western Balkans more or less off the agenda for the next 25 years. As Pierre Jonckheer said, ‘giving all Eastern European countries a perspective is too romantic’, .  

Mediterranean countries

Jonckheer, member of the European Parliament for the Belgian green party Ecolo, put forward several arguments for his position. With 27 members from next January onwards, the EU already needs several levels of integration. ‘And if we allow eastern Europe in, what do we say to the mediterranean countries? Proving our integration model is a success is the only way to really make progress.’ To those who see the EU first of all as a peace project that can not be large enough, he answered: there are other ways for conflict prevention.

For Ulrike Lunacek however, member of the Austrian Parliament and female spokesperson of the EGP and ‘born only 70 kilometres from the EU borders’, closing doors to even the remotest European country poses problems. ‘Within the Union’, she said, ‘we have to create the will. And we have to do our institutional job at the same time’. North Africa, she added, should not be part of the EU but ‘have close relations’ with it.

The previous day, Serhei Kuryikin (Ukrainian Greens) had, during a meeting of the Green East-West Dialogue, strongly urged the EGP not to change the European perspective for his country into a ‘neigbourhood approach’ as it more or less decided during its council in Kiev last year. ‘Good policy is partnership policy. It means you tell countries that, by implementing new approaches and criteria, they eventually can become members and finally will  the whole of Europe will be united. Only thus you can get real commitment from our bureaucrats committed to deal with such iideals as sustainability.’

EGP secretary general Juan Behrend relativised the EGP’s position. ‘The wording is an expression of a lack of consensus’, he said. ‘No one was happy with the term neigbourhood approach, but words like partnership also are a way to say no. And’, he added, ‘there is a clear need to discuss this issue further.’