Brussels, 11/12/2002 (Agence Europe) - At the initiative of the transnational Radical Party (which has seven elected members at the European Parliament), 311 parliamentarians from Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, call, on the eve of the European Council in Copenhagen, for their countries to be included on the list of candidates for joining the European Union.
According to a press release from the Radical Party, these parliamentarians regret being "kept on the sidelines of Europe (…) excluded from the real process of European unification (…), not really European but (…) second class Europeans", although they work hard "in the middle of a thousand difficulties", in order to make democracy take root in their countries. The parliamentarians say they only ask to be recognised as Europeans and to thus benefit from the "enormous asset of having clear prospects for European Union membership, in good time".