EU Enlargement Commissioner: Union Not Ready for Accession

With enlargement of the European Union just three months away, the person who played a crucial part in the process has said the EU is politically not ready for May 1. Günter Verheugen, the commissioner overseeing enlargement, told the Reutlinger General Anzeiger newspaper over the weekend that "in the political sense, the EU is not sufficiently prepared for enlargement." The commissioner elaborated that while technical goals had been achieved in areas such as the internal market and monetary union, important aims in European policy are scarcely reachable in the medium term. Verheugen was also critical of one of the main economic goals of the EU. It is "already possible to see that Europe will not reach the goal of becoming, economically, the most dynamic region in the world," the commissioner told the paper. The reason for this is that "at the moment we cannot fully use our potential due to strong national interests." (EUobserver.com)