In spite of the economic and financial crisis affecting Europe, the EU isn't changing course and is continuing to expand. The last enlargement took place in 2007. With Romania and Bulgaria, the EU went from 25 to 27 Member States. How many countries will form the EU of tomorrow? EuroparlTV takes a look at the accession processes. Five countries currently have the status of candidate for EU membership, but only three have officially started negotiations: Croatia, Turkey and Iceland. Croatia will certainly be the first to cross the finishing line and will become the 28th Member State of the EU. The talks opened with Zagreb in 2005 are now complete. The last stage for Croatia is ratification of its accession treaty by all the Member States and itself. It could join the EU in 2013. This Balkans expert thinks Croatia has increased its efforts in the last two years to meet the conditions set by Brussels. It has decided to let its shipyards go, to stop the subsidies, which will mean many thousands of unemployed people. It has also started to fight corruption very vehemently. It has indicted its former prime minister and a series of other senior officials. The accession process has really led to a transformation in Croatia. Turkey doesn't seem to be taking the same route as Croatia. Accession negotiations with Ankara are completely stuck. Some issues on the internal market are problematic and the biggest stumbling block is Cyprus. Turkey has militarily occupied the north of the island since 1974. It refuses to recognise the Greek part of the island. Relations between Turkey and the EU for membership have become totally politicised, partly because some Member States don't support Turkish EU membership, principally France and Germany, but also the issues related to the Cyprus problem. As long as the Cyprus problem isn't resolved, Turkey cannot accede to the EU anyway. The Turkish Ambassador to the EU deplores this situation. There's no question of Turkey giving up on accession, which we consider to be in our interest just as it's in the interest of the EU. Turkey is unique. No candidate country which has negotiated its accession during the years that have passed since the EU was created has met the kind of difficulties that we have met. That leaves Iceland, the last country to start official negotiations to join the EU. Reykjavik has the advantage that much of its legislation is aligned with that of the EU, but negotiations may hit problems over central questions like that of fishing. Products from the sea represent over 60% of the country's exports and the possible application of quotas from Brussels is of concern. Now we're moving into the challenging phase of negotiating the issues that are outside of the EEA agreement. These are challenging areas: fisheries, agriculture, the monetary union. They have to be negotiated and we have to find an agreement that is mutually acceptable to us and to the European Union. But the main threat to Iceland's plans to join the EU could come from Icelanders themselves. At the end of the negotiations Icelanders will vote in a referendum on whether the country can join the EU. The last opinion poll shows that 57.3% of the island's inhabitants are against the idea. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Montenegro have candidate status but have not yet started their EU accession negotiations. EuroparlTV video ID: b5e3e795-1bf6-4546-9703-9f8800dd8943

• published: 30 Oct 2012
• views: 1502