The European Union begins preparations to take a historic step that will transform it forever, to become a more diverse and extensive club. A step as immense as the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War. Thus, with references to World War II, which gave birth to the germ of today’s Union, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has launched the EU towards its second major enlargement. From 27 to more than 30 members. More than 500 million citizens.
“Europe responds to the call of history. And history now calls us to work to complete our Union,” the head of the Community Executive solemnly remarked this Wednesday in the speech on the state of the Union, the last of a turbulent legislature.
The German, who called for “a vision for a successful enlargement”, has not put a date on the table – unlike the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, who anticipated him by stating a few weeks ago that the EU should be ready to that extension in 2030—. But it has defended, fiercely, a quick process (in community times). The expansion that Von der Leyen demands would be done without waiting to reform the European treaties, to receive the Balkan countries, Ukraine and Moldova. This reform can be done with them inside. “We cannot – and should not – wait for the treaties to change to move forward with enlargement. A Union suitable for enlargement can be achieved more quickly,” the head of the community Executive stressed, thus accelerating the great debate of this political course. “The future of our continent depends on the decisions we make today,” said the Christian Democrat politician.
Fueled by Russia’s imperialist war against Ukraine – which has put the EU in front of the mirror of its weaknesses and its geopolitical map and has illuminated historic political decisions – the enlargement train is already underway. Although it is still too early to know who he will bring on board and how. The great expansion of 2004 added 13 countries to the community club. And that is the example to follow, as Germany has set first and now also much more timidly France, for this second great expansion of its history towards the east, which with the Balkans had been frozen for years and which the Russian invasion revived, also adding to Ukraine and Moldova as candidates.
Von der Leyen has avoided clarifying whether she wants to renew her five-year mandate, which expires in 2024. But she has nevertheless shown signs this Wednesday, in her speech, that she wants to protect this crucial process. The German politician began her path at the head of the community Executive in 2019 with the aspiration of leading the club to a more geopolitical EU, and this great European transformation would be a huge high point in that field. “In a world where size and weight matter, completing our Union is clearly of strategic and security interest for Europe,” the President of the Commission added. “It is time for Europe to think big again and write its own destiny,” she said.
The next expansion is a “merit-based” process, as Von der Leyen and the rest of the community leaders point out. But in the end it is a political decision. Ukraine, for example, a candidate for a year, must complete seven major reforms to begin accession talks. And, when these start, another change guide will arrive. But the candidate countries are not the only ones facing crucial changes. Now, in addition, the Commission is going to open its reports on the rule of law to the accession countries so that they can catch up even faster, the German company has announced.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
The EU has to rethink many of its processes and initiate reforms aimed at absorbing new partners. Structural changes, for example, in its budget system to accommodate countries that will be new beneficiaries or in its majority voting system. The European Commission is now launching a series of political reviews prior to enlargement – a debate that will be on the table of the heads of State and Government next month at the Granada summit, during the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU – to see how the Union can adapt to each of its expanded areas.
Meanwhile, Von der Leyen has banished the doomsayers and asked not to fall into the “old binary debates” about enlargement. “Those who said it would make us less efficient were wrong,” he said. “It is not about deepening integration or expanding the Union,” he said this Wednesday. “Each wave of enlargement was accompanied by political deepening,” added the president of the Commission, who claimed that the next one must also be “a catalyst for progress.”
Green deal and migration
In her speech this Wednesday before the MEPs and her team of commissioners, Von der Leyen established the agenda for this crucial political course: enlargement, green deal, migration policy. And he has called for closing chapters to advance this green agenda, in the immigration pact whose last chapter—that of crisis management—he ran aground in the summer. He has also urged copying the model of the agreement with Tunisia – providing funds to guarantee the control of migration flows, something that has sparked criticism for the violations of human rights by the Government of Tunisian President Kais Said – in other countries both origin and transit.
Before the gaze of the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince, survivor of a Russian attack against a pizzeria in Kramatorsk that killed the Ukrainian author Victoria Amelina, Von der Leyen has assured that the EU will continue to support Ukraine and that it will propose extending temporary protection to Ukrainian citizens in the Union.
The German conservative’s was not a farewell speech. The president of the Commission must be careful not to become a lame duck, as leaders about to leave power are called in the Anglo-Saxon world. Von der Leyen will not have it easy in the last part of his mandate. Not even within his own political family, the European People’s Party, where the president, also German Manfred Weber, led a broadside against some of his star green measures, which he blames for the rise of populism.
With the European elections scheduled for June 2024, Von der Leyen has tried to involve in what she called a “just transition” those sectors that, like farmers in several member states, have cried out against European environmental policies. “I am convinced that agriculture and nature conservation can go hand in hand. We need both,” Von der Leyen said. And she added: “We need more dialogue and less polarization.”
Colombian writer Héctor Abad: “Those who stir up war know that words are important”
Trinidad Deiros
The Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince (Medellín, 64 years old) raised above his head this Wednesday a photograph of his Ukrainian colleague Victoria Amelina in the chamber of the European Parliament in Strasbourg amidst a unanimous ovation from the standing MEPs. It has been a silent tribute to the Ukrainian author, the 13th victim of a Russian missile attack against a restaurant in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, which Abad Faciolince survived on June 27.
Since then, this writer has made it his “duty” to “write about this atrocious crime above the propaganda and lies of the Russians,” he told a group of media after concluding the brief tribute to Amelina in the European Parliament.
“Sometimes we think that words are not important. [en una guerra], that what is important are the people of action, who are at the front, or the people of politics, who make fundamental decisions,” the intellectual has argued. However, he continued, “those who stir up war know that words are important and can make people think twice and understand the complexities” of each war conflict.
In a country like Russia “in which there is only one version of what is happening, those who have a voice, memory and question the official account of what is happening are dangerous people,” concluded Abad Faciolince.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#Von #der #Leyen #launches #European #Union #major #enlargement