Yes, the Union should continue to expand - in fact, it should incorporate any county willing to join and prepared to obey the Union's constitution. This is one of the keys to European soft power: The attraction that we have on minor states in the periphery of our sphere of interest. As they gravitate towards Europe they have to align themselves to our policies far more than we have to align ourselves to their policies, if they want to have a hope in Hell of eventually joining the Union.
If you remove the carrot of membership from those states, you have needlessly neutered the Union's ability to both expand our sphere of interest and exert influence over it.
Yes, Turkey should be permitted to enter the Union if and when they are prepared to adhere to the European constitution. If Turkey is admitted before the Kurdish question is resolved, before those who investigate the Armenian genocide are given full freedom of speech, and without Turkey being a secular country, then the fault lies with the European constitution and those who frame it for failing to contain provisions that ensure freedom of speech, secularism and the right to secession.
If the Union fails to adequately secure those liberties for its own citizens, then it is going to be royally screwed with Turkey or without.
- Jake It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of liquidity. (With apologies to Lemuel K. Washburn)
The EUs borg strategy is quite succesfull as many countries queue up to be assimilated. Lets keep it going. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
The topic EU expansion and Turkey is followed directly by Jerome à Paris' Yawn... more financial markets collapse :-)
I mean, realistically, our boneheaded politicians are likely to screw up Turkey's membership (and/or screw up our relations with Turkey enough that they don't want membership). So if we can dream about Turkish membership, why can't we dream about a constitution?
