EU mulls how to make enlarged bloc work, to offer cash, market access to candidates
investing.comBy Jan Strupczewski
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -European Union governments discussed on Thursday how to revamp EU decision-making and finances to be ready for new members as the Commission said it would propose cash and EU market access for candidates to speed up their membership preparations.
The talks among EU affairs ministers of the 27 current member states in the Spanish town of Murcia were to lay the groundwork for an EU summit on Oct 5-6.
«Enlargement is one of the major challenges that the Union is facing,» Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, told a news conference after the meeting. «We have to be prepared for enlargement.»
Eight countries currently have official EU candidate status — Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — while two, Georgia and Kosovo, are potential candidate countries.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi told the news conference the EU would make internal reforms in parallel with preparations made by candidate countries to meet complex EU entry criteria.
To help the candidates reform faster, the European Commission would present in the next two weeks a package of measures that would offer the candidates gradual EU market access as well as additional cash, Varhelyi said.
Guiding the talks on the EU's internal preparations is a paper prepared by French and German scholars which calls for a radical overhaul of the EU's decision-making and funding before it can accept more countries by a tentative deadline of 2030.
DECISION-MAKING AND MONEY
Decision-making is key because the EU now requires unanimity on foreign and security policy, taxes, EU finances, some areas of justice and
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