Brussels, 28/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - According to Enlargement Commissioner, Günter Verheugen, EU accession for the first ten new members will not be a brake on a continued deepening of European integration, including Common Foreign and Security Policy but on the contrary, should provide additional weight to integrationist forces and supporters of the "Community Method" in an enlarged Union. Addressing a small group of journalists during a meting organised by the European Journalism Centre (EJC), the Commissioner refuted the thesis according to which, future Member States would constitute the Americans' Trojan Horse" to slow down or halt the European project or strengthen supporters of a purely intergovernmental approach. Mr Verheugen declared that, "My general feeling is that we can expect that the candidate countries, after their accession, will support the Community approach, notably on CFSP).
After having recently addressed (in the backdrop to the European Spring Summit last week) all Heads of governments from acceding countries, Mr Verheugen asserted that he, "would not be at all surprised to see these countries soon coming along with a new joint initiative" to push forward CFSP. Until now, candidate countries have always supported the common positions of the EU in foreign policy, "every time there was one" and which, Mr Veheugen noted, in the case of Iraq, there "unfortunately" was not one forthcoming. It would therefore be false to believe that the pro-American attitude of the majority of the ten accession countries in the Iraq affair meant that the Presidency of these new Member States would reduce the chances of an enlarged EU implementing a common foreign and security policy. This also applied to the "Letter from the Eight" and the "Vilnius Declaration", which had been preceded by "extreme pressure" by the US on the candidates, which made a direct link with their access to NATO, pointed out Mr Verheugen. Certainly, enlargement would influence foreign and security of the future Union, "which would change much more than citizens and even politicians currently imagine". Mr Verheugen asserted, however, that this change would offer the enlarged EU "new opportunities, as new members would bring "added value" and it should taken full advantage of. Therefore, new members have specific relations with both Eastern Europe and former USSR countries, as well as the USA. The Commissioner explained that, "The new Member States will influence the EU's transatlantic agenda, but in a positive way. We should capitalise on that ".
Convinced that the political will of accession countries for participating in CFSP, Mr Verheugen thought it important to try first of all in an EU of 25 to take action before envisaging action with a limited number of Member States to push CFSP forward. For this reason, he considers that the recent Belgian-German-French initiative on defence cooperation was "premature".