Essential criteria. Given that all the Balkan countries are European, they should all be allowed to join the EU. Ongoing debates are not concerned with the principle but with the conditions that need to be respected (see this column yesterday).
Two criteria are essential: (a) future enlargement must not compromise the Community acquis, which has been the fruit of the past half century of building the united Europe. This is not any new discovery - it is a principle that clearly stems from...