Doc. 9707

13 February 2003

Europe’s economic challenge in ensuring a successful and smooth European Union enlargement starting with 2004

Motion for a resolution

presented by Mr Severin and others

1.       Following the decision taken b the European Union Summit in Copenhagen in December 2002, to welcome an important number of new member states (ten of them in 2004, two hopefully in 2007 and another one soon after at a date to be established at a later stage) the whole of Europe now stands before the task of rendering this enlargement as smooth and successful as possible;

2.       The new members will have to adapt their legislation, institutions, administrative functioning, macro-economic management, monetary and trade policies in order to conform fully with the European Union’s acquis communautaire. The candidates foreseen for a subsequent membership to the first group of ten will face the supplementary complications that may arise in their economic relations with the 2004 entrants as well as with the European Union which become for a while more heterogeneous from the economic point of view;

3.       A number of adjustments should be considered by the non-candidate countries, both in eastern and in western Europe. Their established economic and trading patterns will change radically as a result of the European Union’s enlargement;

4.       Likewise, the European Union itself will have to adopt a number of internal radical reforms not only to adapt its economic and trading patterns to a dramatically enlarged internal market, or to keep its institutions functional once the decision-making process will involve a bigger number of members, but also in order to cope with the unprecedented internal economic and social disparities of the enlarged Union;

5.       Therefore, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe calls on all those involved in the European Union’s enlargement process and/or on those concerned by it to manifest a maximum of mutual comprehension, good will, imagination, courage and effort, in order to define and to ensure the implementation of the changes and policies necessary for the political and economic success of the historic 2004 and following years enlargement.

Signed (see overleaf)

Signed : ¹

Severin, Romania, SOC

Baciu, Romania, SOC

Berceanu, Romania, SOC

Cavusoğlu, Turkey, EDG

Crema, Italy, SOC

Elo, Finland, SOC

Iwiński, Poland, SOC

Kirilov, Bulgaria, SOC

Masseret, France, SOC

Melcak, Czech Republic, SOC

Pintat Rossel, Andorra, SOC

Popa, Romania, SOC

de Puig, Spain, SOC

Zapfl-Helbling, Switzerland, EPP

¹        SOC: Socialist Group

      EPP: Group of the European People’s Party

      EDG: European Democratic Group

      LDR : Liberal, Democratic and Reformers’ Group

      UEL: Group of the Unified European Left

      NR: not registered in a group