Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, apart from the generally accepted historical reasons for the enlargement of the European Union, another factor which has played an important part in our decision in favour of this initiative is that since the fall of the Iron Curtain there have been differences between the West and former Eastern Bloc countries in terms of prosperity, democracy and law and order which cannot be allowed to continue. We therefore have good reasons for working to ensure that prosperity and democracy also have a chance in those countries where that was impossible under Soviet dictatorship. With enlargement, we are pushing the boundary of prosperity and democracy further eastwards, so that the question once again arises, this time in the case of our new neighbours, of how we can live alongside them, and the Commission is to be congratulated on the way it has racked its brains to find solutions. I support all the activities described by the Commissioner down to the last detail – with one exception, where I am opposed. That is your suggestion, Mr Verheugen, that you can manage all this without making a statement about possible decisions on accession. On that particular point I think you are wrong. I think it is essential, while we are in the process of enlargement – a process that will keep us busy for a long time in fact – that we should spell out who is to be a neighbour in the future and who is to be a future Member State of the European Union. It is now absolutely imperative for us to address the issue of the borders of the European Union – and I do not just mean its geographical borders. The Treaty itself obliges us to address this issue, because, as the Commission communication correctly mentions, European states may apply for membership of the European Union. However, we need to consider how far the political union that we consider desirable can be extended, what the limits to integration are, what the shape of our future structures will be, and what the nature of the European Union must be. That is not something we can or should try to resolve conclusively today, but it is very much under discussion in the Convention. We do not need to resolve the conflict about whether the European Union is a federal state or some other kind of animal. In such cases we lawyers tend to talk about something being sui generis. However, we do need to make a decision about who in future will be neighbours and who will be Member States, because on the one hand we owe the citizens of the European Union some clarity on this issue, as they want to know how far the European project now extends, but on the other hand we also owe clarity to our neighbours, whose hopes we should not raise if they cannot be fulfilled. That is one of the problems that we have with Turkey, which is an important partner and ally. The question of how to deal with Turkey has been left unresolved for too long. The objective of ‘political union’ also has its limits. The process of enlargement has now essentially reached a stage where there may still be some scope for ‘rounding off’, but any further accession that would jeopardise the Union's capacity for integration and totally undermine the balance between these 25 states has to be ruled out. Enlargement has reached a stage where to shape a common view by reconciling varying positions and conflicting standpoints would take so much energy that there would be no scope for effective external action. That is indeed one of the lessons of the Iraq war, where divergent viewpoints within the European Union condemned us to inaction. Who can seriously believe that the accession of countries ranging from the Mediterranean area through Turkey to Russia could possibly make the Union stronger and more effective? That is why we need to resolve the question of the borders of the European Union now, and only then can we try to act as good neighbours. IN THE CHAIR: MR COLOM I NAVALVice-President

Political group: PPE-DE