POLITICS-EU: A Time for Reform, Expanding Frontiers without Walls

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Jorge Piña

ROME, Jun 9 2000 (IPS) - The European Union (EU) is reviewing its founding treaties to prepare for accepting 13 new members and embark on a period of major reforms and changes.

The mission of an inter-governmental conference (IGC) on institutional reforms that got underway in February and is due to end in December is to adapt EU institutions “to make a success of enlargement” from the current 15 to 28 members.

The applicants seeking admission to the EU are Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.

The institutional reforms agreed are to be approved by the Council of Europe at a Dec 7 meeting of heads of state and government in the French city of Nice, who will also reach decisions on common foreign and defence policy.

The director-general for European integration in Italy’s foreign ministry, Rocco Cangelosi, commended the work of the conference at a meeting with the press Wednesday.

Cangelosi told IPS that his country put high priority on the work being carried out in the IGC, because enlargement is “a historic and unavoidable imperative, and even a moral duty” for the EU.

He stressed respect for freedom, human rights, democracy and the rights of minorities as essential requisites for the admission of new countries.

With respect to the question of the inflow of non-EU immigrants, Cangelosi said Europe’s aim was not to “build a fortress.” But he did underline the need for beefed-up security along the borders, as well as measures to ensure an orderly influx of immigrants.

“We must not only combat clandestine immigration, but must also help generate employment opportunities in Europe as well as in the (immigrants’) countries of origin,” he said.

Cangelosi maintained that new walls were not needed, because “it would be a mistake for the EU to shut itself in.”

Although cooperation policy is not one of the issues under discussion at the IGC, development aid will always remain one of Europe’s chief objectives, the official added.

Italy’s foreign relations minister Lamberto Dini, meanwhile, stated in a forum on enlargement of the bloc that the future of Europe depended on three overlying concepts: liberty, governability and stability.

Referring to the future of the EU, Dini cited Argentine literary giant Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986): “every era is an era of transition. We know only one thing about the future: it will not be the same as the present.”

The minister recalled that nearly 40 years ago, US president John F. Kennedy pictured a Europe that would be “free, thanks to its diversity, and strong, thanks to its unity.”

Dini pointed out that those terms are not mutually exclusive but complementary, and that Europe’s ultimate aim must always be the people’s well-being and defence of the principles of freedom, tolerance, transparency and democracy.