03/05/2022 (Agence Europe) – The Austrian Foreign Minister, Alexander Schallenberg, pleaded on Tuesday 3 May in the Financial Times for a reflection on the EU accession process. He said the EU should grant countries wishing to join it early access to “ certain parts of the common market” and to certain EU programmes and institutions as part of a transition process towards membership. The Minister explained that the Union could no longer afford to take half-measures towards its neighbours, because “there is no vacuum. It’s either our model or someone else’s ”. “Enlargement is not a legalistic and bureaucratic approach, it is a geostrategic instrument”, Schallenberg warned. He said the whole concept of the EU’s neighbourhood policy needed to be rethought as the Eastern Partnership “is gone”. (CG)