By Jan Strupczewski
BRUSSELS, Sept 28 (Reuters) – The European Commission will soon propose that the EU give more money to countries wishing to join and offer them access to the single market to speed up their accession preparations, the commissioner said responsible for enlargement, Oliver Varhelyi.
Eight countries currently have the status of official EU candidates – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine – while two, Georgia and Kosovo, are potential candidate countries.
The chairman of European Union leaders, Charles Michel, has called for the EU to be ready to accept new members and for applicants to be ready to meet entry criteria by 2030.
“In a few weeks you will see us presenting a new way of thinking about enlargement and a package that will now include 10 candidate countries, or countries with a European perspective,” Varhelyi told a news conference.
“In this report we want not only to move forward, but also to provide the means for accelerated integration,” he said after a meeting in Spain of EU ministers, who discussed how the EU should prepare for the admission of new members.
Varhelyi said the EU would seek to help candidates prepare more quickly for EU membership through a growth plan for the Western Balkans to reduce the “economic and social gap” between these countries and the rest of the EU before accession.
Under the plan, countries would gradually gain access to the EU’s single market of 450 million consumers, where goods, services, labor and capital can move freely, even before becoming members. full membership of the EU.
“We want to create the opportunity to gradually integrate these countries into the single market, into the four freedoms, already before accession, because this will benefit both the European Union and the candidate countries,” Varhelyi said.
He added that the Commission’s proposal would also seek more EU money for applicants to help them speed up the reforms needed to join the now 27-nation bloc. The potential amounts were not specified.
This money would come on top of existing EU pre-accession aid for candidate countries, which in the 2021-2027 EU budget amounts to €14.2 billion (€14.98 billions of dollars).
These measures would demonstrate that the EU is ready to welcome new members and place the responsibility on candidate countries to take full advantage of these opportunities, Varhelyi said.
($1 = 0.9479 euros) (Reporting by Jan Strupczewski, editing by Mark Potter)