Verheugen: "EU is politiek nog niet klaar voor de uitbreiding" (en)

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 1 May.

Günter Verheugen, the enlargement Commissioner, told the Reutlinger General Anzeiger 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.

Mr 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", said the Commissioner.

The reason for this is that "at the moment we cannot fully use our potential due to strong national interests".

The national egoism surrounding the debate on the EU Constitution came in for criticism, too.

Poland, which has been strongly resisting a new voting system in the treaty, has "put itself in danger of isolation", says the Commissioner.

However, Mr Verheugen added that the Poles "have realised that they have positioned themselves falsely".