Strasbourg, 17/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - The result of the vote on the Brok Report on European enlargement strategy (EUROPE 9153) delights President Chirac's UMP. In a press release, UMP European representative Alain Lamassoure comments, saying that, by adopting the report, the EP has followed up proposals made by the UMP since 2004: - need to fix geographical frontiers to the EU and to subject all further enlargement to absorption capacity; - development of a new privileged partnership status (Ed. These terms are not used in the resolution) to be proposed to neighbouring countries. Mr Lamassoure noted that, to date, both Council and Parliament had avoided any debate of real substance on this, concluding that this fundamental issue should be one of the major themes for political reactivation in Europe in 2007 (Ed.: year of presidential elections in France).
Satisfaction is toned down on the SPD side. Klaus Hänsch is opposed to the idea of establishing a multilateral framework for countries that do not aspire to EU membership, preferring a neighbourhood policy “tailor-made for each individual case”. Another German Social Democrat, Bernhard Rapkay, agrees with Mr Hänsch (with whom he has written an SPD position paper on enlargement appreciated even by Liberal Lambsdorff) in saying that, with the Brok Report, “the direction is good but the content is too vague”.