The European Union insisted Sunday it was still committed eastward enlargement despite a stir caused by the EU commissioner in charge of negotiations with aspiring member states saying he supported a referendum in Germany on the issue.
In an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said: "It's a risk, but I'm for it," when asked if he thought Germans should vote on whether to open the union's doors to the 13 countries lined up to join.
"Contrary to what we did with the euro, with enlargement, we should not take decisions over people's heads," Verheugen, who is himself German, was quoted as saying.
Faced with what looked like an embarassing break in the ranks of his own team, European Commission President Romano Prodi -- who spoke on the telephone with Verheugen late Saturday -- insisted there was no change in policy.
"It's a personal opinion (of Verheugen's), but what's important is that the position of the commission hasn't changed," Prodi told reporters at the end of a two-day informal meeting of EU foreign ministers. "I don't want this small misunderstanding to give in any case the wrong message to applicant countries," he said.
After the call, Verheugen told Germany's ZDF television network Sunday that the commotion caused by his newspaper interview was "unfounded".
He said all he meant to convey was his regrets that there was no possibility of holding a referendum in Germany over "what would be an historic milestone for Europe."
The enlargement process, he said, "will not suffer any delay."
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the idea of a German referendum was null and void anyway, given that the country's constitution did not allow the holding of such a public consultation. "It does not reflect the position of the German government," Fischer told reporters, adding that he disagreed with a remark quoted by Verheugen in the newspaper interview that enlargement talks were "a dirty job."
The commissioner, Fischer said, has been doing a very good job "until now."
Germany is the biggest of the 15 EU member states, the one that pays the most money into its coffers. It is also, after Austria, the one that borders directly on the most aspiring member countries. But in a Eurobarometer survey published in June, only 20 percent of Germans polled thought that "welcoming new countries" was a priority -- the smallest proportion of any member state.
At their Helsinki summit last December, EU leaders set 2003 as the date that the union must be ready to start taking in new members. But many candidate states fear they may no longer be so welcome.
In the first wave of applicants are Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Lithuania and Cyprus. Negotiations were extended this year to Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia and Malta.
Turkey also has candidate status, but EU leaders have opted not to invite it to the negotiating table before it curbs the military's role in political life and improves its human rights record. - (AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
