Thursday

28th Mar 2024

US welcomes EU expansion and calls for more

The US has welcomed the EU's decision to expand to include Bulgaria and Romania from January and urged the bloc not to stop there but to continue and make good on promises to Balkan states and Turkey.

State department spokesperson Sean McCormack called the green light for Sofia and Bucharest "welcome news for those two countries as well as the EU."

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He went on to say that "the EU is wrestling with these issues of expansion and at what pace to take the talks that they have ongoing with a variety of other countries."

While noting that enlargement is something for the Europeans to decide on, Mr McCormack stressed that Washington "certainly would encourage the EU to continue to keep open a European horizon for a number of states, including those in the Balkans and Turkey, as well."

The US has long been a supporter of Turkey's bid to join the EU causing some anger in 2002 when it openly pushed member states to begin talks with Ankara – a NATO member and ally of Washington.

Similarly, in April, Nicholas Burns the US under-secretary for political affairs, said "Our business in Europe isn't finished because the Balkans remains an island in the heart of Europe that is not connected to the great transatlantic institutions: EU and NATO."

Europe has tended to react to the US' statements on enlargement with an irritated shrug at what it sees as Washington meddling in internal European affairs. This time around, US enthusiasm for enlargement comes just as the bloc looks set to close the doors for some time after Romania and Bulgaria join.

Earlier this week, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said that there should be an enlargement pause from January until the bloc agrees a new institutional settlement.

The current impasse over the EU constitution already looks near impossible to break with countries reluctant to pick out different aspects of the document which was the result of years of haggling and painstaking compromise.

Adding two new countries - bringing the total to 27 - to the decision mix is not going to make the situation any easier.

Meanwhile, public opinion across several member states has become sceptical about the benefits of further enlargement with 12 new countries having joined the bloc in under three years by January - and several more lining up.

Reflecting a general frustration in some quarters at the way Europe is continuing with enlargement despite not having sorted out some of its more fundamental problems, leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, on Wednesday said a "true Europe" is at risk.

He said that the parliament was being hypocritical by saying yes to Bulgaria and Romania although their EU progress report contained a raft of caveats. Mr Cohn-Bendit said MEPs would not have given the green light to Turkey under similar conditions.

This latest enlargement, whose terms and rhythm should have been better thought out, risks a "renationalisation" of the thoughts, policies and practices of member states, according to the MEP.

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With the war in Ukraine showing no signs of ending any time soon, EU leaders will meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday (21 and 22 March) to discuss how to boost the defence capabilities of Ukraine and of the bloc itself.

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