We'll accept you if we have room, EU tells Macedonia

European leaders accepted Macedonia as a candidate for EU membership today, but linked the Balkan nation’s entry to a debate on the union’s future and its ability to absorb more relatively poor newcomers.

“The (EU’s) absorption capacity has to be taken into account” in a final assessment of Macedonia’s membership, the 25 EU leaders said in a Brussels summit statement.

Last month, the European Commission recommended naming Macedonia an EU candidate, widening its embrace of the Balkans to make the EU’s volatile south-eastern edge a safer place.

The leaders agreed, saying Macedonia has made “substantial progress” in political and economic reforms.

But in response to French concerns that the EU’s expansion be tempered, they added that “further steps will have to be considered in the light of the debate on the EU’s enlargement strategy (and) the absorption capacity of the union”.

That hesitation – the first since the EU started considering membership for more than a dozen and a half neighbours after the collapse of communism – stems from concerns the EU is expanding too fast.

The EU did not have the capacity to absorb more members, French prime minister Dominique de Villepin said this week in the French parliament.

The European Commission calls Macedonia, which applied for EU membership in March 2004, “a European success story” for turning itself from a flashpoint of ethnic hatred in 2001 to a democratic country.

A Western-brokered peace deal ended six months of fighting in Macedonia in 2001. The EU now has a police mission in the country of two million – of whom 25% are ethnic Albanians – overseeing the peace process.

Apart from the EU’s absorption capacity, Greece is demanding that Macedonia change its name to the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, arguing that “Macedonia” implies territorial claims towards the northern Greek province of Macedonia and could threaten regional stability.

French officials want a broad debate on the EU’s future expansion, saying the bloc, which took in 10 more nations last year, can barely cope under current operating rules.

French and Dutch voters rejected the European constitution in a referendum in May, sending shockwaves through EU capitals that promptly halted the charter project for at least a year.

Nations wanting to join include Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Turkey as well as the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia-Montenegro. Further east, Ukraine is also stirring to get in.

Expansion to the Balkans is expected to top the EU agenda during Austria’s six-month EU presidency, starting in January. Austria, which is close to the region, is keen to boost EU aid and open the door to future membership for countries still reeling from the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.