Sir,

The European Union is the most successful peace process the world has ever known.  As Václav Havel recently said, it is better to have our fights in the conference hall rather than the battlefield.

However, joining the EU is not a one-way street.   Although I support further enlargement of the EU, it cannot be guaranteed that all Western Balkan nations will be eligible to join the EU by 2014.  Expansion cannot continue ‘without interruption’, as the Montenegrin Prime Minister, Milo Djukanovic, recently stated.   

As set out in 1993, at the Copenhagen European Council, every candidate state must fulfil a strict set of economic and political conditions.  This requires all new members to have a stable, democratic government that respects the rule of law and the principles of freedom, equality and  human rights.  Furthermore, the candidate country must have the capacity to cope with the pressures of the internal market and have the ability to implement all EU laws. Even Iceland may have to wait at least two and a half years before it is eligible to join the EU. 

We will not have a truly united Europe until the Balkans are brought into the fold and I hope that by 2014 these countries will have fulfilled the basic requirements for becoming an EU member state.

Yours sincerely,

Catherine Stihler

MEP for Scotland