"The world will end not with a bang but with a whimper," said outgoing Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein when asked in a Financial Times interview to describe his take on the EU's further enlargement. Bolkestein believes that, at 25 members, the EU has already reached its highest point of integration, and that the possible accession of Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the countries of the Western Balkans would paralyse governance and create "either chaos or a bureaucratic monstrosity in Brussels". Bolkestein is known to have been opposed to the Commission's 6 October decision to clear the path for Turkey's accession talks.
Bolkestein, who will be succeeded by Ireland's Charlie McCreevy as the head of the Internal Market DG on 1 November, puts the onus for Europe's high unemployment rate on France's policies and Germany's "old-fashioned, industrial-policy-type thinking". "It is time they joined the 21st century," he believes.
In his opinion, it "no longer seems in reach" for the EU to become the world's most competitive economy by 2010. The Lisbon agenda has become overloaded and must be slimmed down, Bolkestein believes.
Regarding the broader future of Europe, Bolkestein's advice to incoming Commission President Barroso is to state a few "elementary truths" in public. "One of these is that Europe will never be a federation."
Meanwhile, in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer reiterated his country's full support for Turkey's EU bid, and Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul expressed his confidence that Germany would help in overcoming France's objections.
