Berlin (dts) - CDU leader Friedrich Merz is committed to accepting new members into the European Union and criticizes the handling of the anniversary of the EU's eastward expansion in Germany this May 1st.
“The date hardly played a role in our political attention,” he told the “Tagesspiegel”. “Especially in Berlin, where our Central and Eastern European EU partners are particularly looking, we should have given greater recognition to this completion of the European freedom and peace project 20 years ago.”
From his point of view, the date is “in line with the Treaty of Rome of 1957, when Western Europe was unified”. On May 1, 2004, in addition to Malta and Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary were admitted to the European Union - Bulgaria and Romania followed in 2007. “Not all trees have grown into the sky “But the eastward expansion was clearly the right thing to do,” Merz continued.
The opposition leader in the Bundestag also made it clear that a Union-led federal government would also be open to additional states joining the community. “The door of the European Union remains open to new members such as Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova or the Western Balkan states if they meet the criteria.”
In order to bind “countries that do not want to join or are not yet able to join us more closely to us,” Merz continued, a reform of the process is necessary: “We need more concrete intermediate steps on the way to the European Union.” In the 1990s, the Efta economic area played this role with certain internal market freedoms. When making his proposal, he was “also thinking about Great Britain and Turkey”.
