EUobserver.com

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Parliament is preparing a report that argues in favour of significantly slowing down the process of further enlargement of the EU, warning that hurried expansion will lead to a fragmented Union.

Prepared for the foreign affairs committee by German centre-right MEP Elmar Brok, the draft report says: "Further enlargement without adequate consolidation could lead to a Union of multiple configurations, with core countries moving towards closer integration and others lying at its margins."

The draft, which is due to be voted on in committee in May and by the wider plenary the following month, suggests that aspiring EU members should be offered a wider choice of political relations with the EU.

At the moment, the EU offers only full membership or a neighbourhood policy - a neighbourly agreement without much political bite.

Enlargement strategy should "be flanked by a more diversified range of external contractual frameworks." Countries could then graduate to more integrated agreements if they fulfilled certain conditions.

The report welcomes France's plans for a Union for the Mediterranean, seeing it as a way of binding southern countries to the EU and offers eastern neighbours – which have a "clear" European perspective – a sort of half-way house between full membership and the current neighbourhood policy.

This could take the form of a "European Commonwealth."

Despite the proposal for a stronger political relationship with the EU, the report's emphasis on its own ability to absorb new member states represents a blow to countries such as Ukraine and Georgia which have been strongly lobbying Brussels for hints that they can eventually join the club.

Turkey, as a candidate EU member, is also not happy with the report, and is lobbying to have it altered. In an apparent veiled reference to Turkey – which is large and poor - the report says that each new member state could have an "impact" on Union policies and the budget and "affect the nature of the Union itself."

According to a European Parliament official, the enlargement-wary report has received broad cross-party backing by MEPs from several pre-2004 member states in the committee.

However, MEPs from newer member states who favour Ukraine's EU membership do not like its tone.

At a recent hearing in the European parliament on the issue, Andres Kasekamp, director of the Estonian foreign policy unit, said: "The history of previous enlargements proves that widening versus deepening is a false dilemma."

"Enlargement has always been a catalyst for strengthening the functions and institutions of the Union," he noted adding that the EU, while no longer a "cosy club", is "functioning adequately."

At the moment, three countries have candidate status to join the EU - Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey, while Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina have all been promised EU membership in the long run.

The EU expanded by 10 member states in 2004 and took on Bulgaria and Romania in 2007.

Speaking about the relative success of previous enlargements, the report says: "This is no guarantee that such accelerated pace can be sustained further."

MEP report seeks to put brake on further EU enlargement