The process of enlargement, which achieved a significant breakthrough at the recent summit in Copenhagen with the signing of the “pact” that opens the way to the “25-member Europe” (due to become a reality in 2004), monopolizes the attention of the international dailies, intent on analysing the significance of the accords reached. “The Europe of the 25, with Turkey on the waiting list”, headlines Le Monde (15-16/12), which speaks of an “historic enlargement to the European Union to ten new countries”. “The Europe of the 25 has been born”, write Arnaud Leparmentier and Laurent Zecchini, and they add: “After the last financial negotiations, the European Council of Copenhagen completed its essential mission on Friday 13 December, by consecrating the enlargement of the European Union to eight countries of central and eastern Europe (…), as well as to Cyprus and Malta”. The French daily also devoted an extensive “dossier” to “our Turkish neighbours”, consisting of a series of historical, political, economic and religious analyses. “Affirming that Turkey’s entry into the EU would mean ‘the end of the Union’ says the introduction to the dossier , Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has launched a debate on the European identity (…). Must Ankara find a place inside or only ‘to one side’ of the European home? At Copenhagen, the Europeans decided not to pronounce on the possible opening of membership negotiations with Turkey before December 2004″. Another leading Europeanist, Jacques Delors, is the protagonist of the “dossier” dedicated by La Croix (14-15/12) to the process of enlargement, thanks to which “ Europe is seeking its frontiers”, as the Catholic daily headlines its report. “Constructing a Europe as a peacemaker, as a guarantor of solidarity between its members, and a Europe capable of exerting an influence in the world so that it feels itself responsible for the evolution of the planet”: that, according to Delors, is the original spirit of the “common European home”, which needs to be taken into account also in the enlargement of its own frontiers. Great interest in the issues of European enlargement is also displayed by the German press. “The principle according to which any European state that fulfils the political and economic conditions of the EU may claim to become a member is no longer sustainable for the subsistence of the community. A EU thus enlarged is reduced to a zone of free trade, because the things in common are too few to form the basis of a real political union”, writes Martin Winter in the Frankfurter Rundschau of 14/12. Another Frankfurt daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( Faz) of 16/12 reports: “Instead of harmonizing the Europe of the East and of the West with a ‘spiritual reunification’, the heads of state and of government of the 15 smoothed the way to Turkey to enter this fragile and insecure union. Europe is not a jumble of states united on the basis of geostrategic calculations or reciprocal economic benefits. Europe is a community of peoples that have formed common values in the course of many centuries”. In the edition of the same paper of 17/12, Michael Stabenow observes: “A European Union to which the Ukraine, Morocco or even Russia should eventually belong would have little in common” with the community envisaged by its founders. The weekly Der Spiegel of 16/12 publishes a report on the work of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. “ With a brutal display of force, Washington is keeping the UNO under pressure. Probably as early as January the Americans intend to pressure the Security Council into a war against Iraq irrespective of what the inspectors find in Baghdad. Throughout the world disenchantment with the conduct of the superpower is growing“, notes the columnist.
