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A web page about Europe, European Union, Integration, Enlargement, Globalisation , War, Peace, Trade, Economy, Development, Society, History, Geography, Culture, European Coal and Steel Community, European Economic Community, by Neytcho Iltchev

That's why last year, at the European Summit in the French city of Nice, we already adapted the European Institutions - the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament - for the coming enlargement. Any newcomer already knows how many seats he may have in these institutions, what the procedures are of political decision-making and what the objective conditions imply for joining the Union.

By doing so, the work is not finished. Nice was an important step in shaping the Union, but it was not a final step. Many issues are still open for discussion. First of all the political union is still far behind the economic and monetary union. We yet did not agree on a common foreign and defence policy. We still do not have one European framework for police and justice, nor did we find a common approach for the many asylum seekers, migrants and refugees fleeing to Europe. A "social" Europe, providing full employment and social security on a European scale, is far from accepted. And yet, there is no agreement on the final objectives and ultimate goals of European "unionism". It's clear we are not willing to make a European "super-state". Existing national states will not disappear. But there is a growing awareness that Union decision-making has to be enhanced and that European institutions can go further than what we attained in Nice.

It is the manifest intention of the European Union to clear these questions and to bring the Union closer to its objectives. Therefore we prepare a Declaration of Laeken, the Brussels site of a European Summit in December this year, to clarify these objectives and to fix the way the Union will go in the following decades. At the same time I am actually visiting all the capitals of the candidate-member states willing to join the Union, in order to make clear that enlargement is an absolute priority for the Union. As a matter of fact the windows of opportunity, opened by the miracle years 1989-1991 may not be open for ever. We must use the given opportunities to enlarge the Union now. Tomorrow may be too late. A similar opportunity does not come back in the foreseeable future.

A failure would be particularly harmful for the candidate-states. Economic development in this part of Europe in many cases is far behind western standards. But the Union can not afford to be a rich-men's club. These nations deserve help and cooperation. They have suffered the heaviest burden of the 20th century, many years in-between nazi-Germany and Soviet-Russia, while never abandoning their European roots nor their European dreams. Although many of them are Slav and orthodox, having only loose contacts with the Latin and Germanic West for centuries, they have contributed to the same flowering of European culture and deserve our warmest feelings of togetherness, cooperation and partnership.