Countries 'have no natural right to join EU'
France’s prime minister cautioned aspiring European Union members yesterday that there is “no natural right, no historical right” for countries to join the bloc.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the EU “does not today have the vocation to expand indefinitely”.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he also called for Europe to be “demanding and ambitious” in pressing ahead this year with efforts to adapt European institutions to the bloc’s expansion.
President Jacques Chirac has already signalled France’s intention to suggest ways of pushing the EU forward in 2006 and overcome the French and Dutch rejections of the EU’s draft constitution in referendums last year.
Scepticism over continuing EU expansion, in particular membership talks with overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, were widely regarded as a major factor in the charter’s defeat.
Villepin stressed that a decision on whether to admit Turkey “must remain open until the end of the negotiations”.
“More generally, we must embark quickly on a reflection on the general enlargement strategy of the union, its pace and its conditions,” he said.
“There is no natural right, no historical right to enter the union – and the promise of enlargement cannot be the only instrument for the stabilisation of regions neighbouring Europe.”
French voters, Villepin argued, believed Europe “did not protect us sufficiently against the consequences of globalisation”.
“France did not say no to Europe,” Villepin said in a speech at Berlin’s Humboldt University. “It said no to a Europe whose vocation it no longer understood and in which it was no longer able to imagine its role, its place.”
Villepin said a solution to the constitutional impasse should strengthen the role of national parliaments and strengthen Europe on the international stage.
He urged it to “choose zones of priority for our actions – the Balkans, the Middle East for example”.
The prime minister also called for Europe to set up an ”intervention force” of experts to help prevent the spread of bird flu and suggested that Germany and France take the first step toward “a real European police” by setting up a joint border force.
Chirac will hold a meeting of selected ministers to prepare French initiatives on Europe ahead of the next summit in March, government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope said yesterday.
