Speeches: Günter Verheugen, Member of the European Commission of the European Union

7th IRU East-West Road Transport Conference Budapest, 15-16 May 2003 Budapest Congress Centre (BCC), Alkotas u. 63-67 - 1123 Budapest, Hungary

VIDEO: Interview

Günter Verheugen
Member of the European Commission of the European Union

Part 1

I must say that I still believe that it was almost a miracle that we have achieved what we have achieved when the current Commission began its work in the summer of 1999 and President Prodi decided that, for the first time in the history of the Commission, a commissioner should be responsible exclusively for enlargement and a separate top management group would be set up for it. This was a great risk because we did not know, firstly whether the candidate countries would summon up enough will to reform to meet all the conditions in a relatively short time, and secondly we did not know whether the member countries would summon up the political will to keep the promise to the candidate countries, also in a very short time, and we were faced with a mountain of difficulties.

But I must say that most of these difficulties have been overcome by the people in the future member countries themselves. Therefore it is not I who has done most of the work, nor my colleagues, nor the bureaucrats but the vast majority of the work has been done by the people in the future member countries.

Part 2

And throughout the whole process the most important thing for me was actually maintaining the political momentum, i.e. ensuring that the dynamics, the impetus for the process didn’t get lost and to create a political situation where it was practically impossible to stop or prevent the whole project. And now we have achieved our aims within the time frame we had set ourselves and I think that we can say today that we have changed Europe more by this than most people in Europe today are aware of.

Part 3

I must say that of course, originally, the role of the Commission was not defined as a type of honest broker between member states and future member states. But originally, of course, the Commission was nothing more in this process than a sort of technical instrument for the member states. But I am very pleased to be able to say that the member countries accepted that the Commission should manage the strategy of this process very early on actually.

Of course, each year we submitted not only reports on the development but also gave strategic recommendations on how it should proceed. And these strategic recommendations were always accepted unchanged by the Council and by the member countries so that we were able to evolve more and more into a position where we considered specifically both the interests of the current member states and also the interests of the future member states in our proposals.

Part 4

The interesting thing is that for each individual step in these negotiations we always needed the approval of the 15 member states of course. And we got that in each individual case, in thousands of cases. And that was really only possible because the Commission was the only institution in Europe in a position to make balanced suggestions, suggestions which did not ask too much of anybody and suggestions which were, above all, completely in the interests of the whole Community.

Part 5

There were extraordinarily difficult chapters in the negotiations and there were also extraordinarily difficult negotiating situations. Moreover there were also major political difficulties which did not directly find their expression at all in the negotiations but which were rather, if you like, accompanying political symptoms. If I may mention only one of the difficulties, particularly sensitive areas of the negotiations were the whole question of free movement for employees.

Part 6

And even in the area which will interest you most, in traffic and transport, there was a large number of difficulties. And so I shall never forget that right up to the very last day, the transport chapter could not be concluded with one country because there were difficulties between a large member country and a future member country regarding the future competition situation. This was, specifically, the question of cabotage.

On the whole I must say that the transport chapter was rather an easy chapter because here the technical requirements on all sides had been recognised relatively quickly and what actually had to happen in the area of traffic management is something that will happen after the other states join when the regional and structural policies in particular are implemented in practice.

Part 7

I think in the end the decisive thing was always the recognition that we had to take up the opportunity we have now. And I have always drummed it into people directly that if we don’t take the opportunity now, if we don’t do it now, then nobody knows when we shall have the opportunity again.

Part 8

But I must say that it is difficult to foresee how great the difference between Day One of membership and the last day of non-membership will be felt in the individual countries. But, my personal forecast is, that in most cases it will not be felt as sensational and critical at all. That applies to the new member countries. In the old member countries people will hardly notice anything at all on the 1^st day.

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