EU executive to resist drawing final borders

Brussels, Nov 6: The European Commission will resist pressure from France and others to draw final borders for the European Union when it publishes a sensitive report this week on the bloc's capacity to absorb further members.

EU leaders, under pressure from France and Austria, where public opposition to Turkey's candidacy is strongest, instructed the Brussels executive in June to prepare a definition of the Union's ''absorption capacity'' for a summit next month.

The focus on ''absorption capacity'' has become a coded way of questioning whether the EU will ever be able to absorb such a large, poor, populous and overwhelmingly Muslim country as Turkey, extending the bloc's borders to Iran, Iraq and Syria.

The study will accompany a critical report on Turkey's progress in the year since it began membership talks, which EU sources say will lament a slowdown in the pace of reforms and a failure to open its ports to shipping from Cyprus.

The Commission will argue on Wednesday that Europe's frontiers are ''defined more by values than by firm geographical borders,'' according to a source familiar with the report.

''It's not possible to take a pen and draw final borders,'' the source said.

Conservative French presidential frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy called in a recent speech in Brussels for the EU to spell out its ultimate borders.

He argued the EU should offer an intermediate status, which he calls a ''privileged partnership'', to countries such as Turkey or North African countries which in his view should never join.

Consolidation, Conditionality, Caution

Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn contends that the onus is on the EU to improve its ability to integrate newcomers by reforming its creaking institutions and overhauling its budget. Rehn says he is taking account of ''enlargement fatigue'' among voters, particularly in Western Europe, by consolidating the existing expansion agenda, applying strict conditions in entry talks, and being very cautious about any new commitments.

That means the EU stays open to Turkey and all the Western Balkans countries, once they meet all the criteria, but it will neither offer a membership prospect to states such as Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia or Belarus, nor rule them out forever.

Brussels has set tougher conditions in accession negotiations with Turkey and Croatia than were imposed on any previous candidate, much to the frustration of Ankara, which feels the EU keeps raising the bar.

The Commission will resist French pressure to declare public acceptance a condition for further enlargement, but Paris has effectively done this unilaterally by writing into its constitution a provision that any new accession after Croatia will be subject to a referendum in France.

Wednesday's report will propose some practical steps to improve the quality and transparency of accession negotiations with candidate countries.

But it will point to the need for institutional reforms in EU decision making and the long-term budget, notably to modernise agricultural and regional subsidies, as a necessary preparation for further enlargement.

A senior EU official said the bloc had a de facto breathing space of about five years until the next enlargement, once Bulgaria and Romania join in January.

That leaves time for a new institutional settlement and budget reform provided the Union can overcome a political deadlock caused by the rejection of the EU constitution by French and Dutch voters last year.

Reuters