 Thank you very much for the invitation from the Institute, and I really welcome this opportunity to engage with Turkish colleagues. What I'd like to do briefly is to sketch the relationship between enlargement and integration, or widening and deepening. I've been, I'm a specialist in European integration, and within that a subspecialist on enlargement studies. I wrote my PhD on the Eastern enlargement of the EU, and I'm writing a book currently about the EU's relationship with the Western Balkans. I think there's a real sense that enlargement has diminished as a political priority for the EU over the last number of years, particularly as it's had to grapple with the different disintegrative dynamics of the eurozone. There's been an understandable knock-on impact on enlargement as a political priority, and this is evident if you read the documentation emanating from the commission, if you consider the kind of mood music that's been coming out of Brussels. And also there's a less ambitious operational framework attached to the process, and I'll say a bit more about that in a few minutes. But I think it's worth acknowledging that there's nothing new about this if we go back to the late 1990s. There were, as much as Eastern enlargement was a priority for the EU, a declared priority, there were real fears about the final stages of negotiations and that the accession process would not be delivered or would be delayed very significantly. And I think we can be glad in many senses that there was a successful conclusion to negotiations at the end of 2002. Imagine if those negotiations had moved on into 2006, 2007 and 2008, we'd be in a very different place in respect of those conclusions. So there is this distinct sense of gloom, if you like, which pervades the enlargement framework, and this has led to all kinds of speculation about a change in the kind of guiding framework for negotiations, that some kind of multi-speed vehicle or vehicles would be necessary to guide relations with the Western Balkans and more especially with Turkey. Now that's been resisted in all kinds of ways in some of the member states and within the Commission because they have developed over time and especially through the Eastern enlargement round a more or less unitary enlargement framework where negotiations take place around 35 chapters, where there are benchmarks set and these have become progressively tougher over time, but where there is at least the prospect for those applicants that negotiate a terminus at the end of the process. But the multi-speed perspective is one that has gained traction significantly and it's partly because of developments within the Eurozone. You don't need to be told, I think, that there are all kinds of suggestions about variable geometry, about a Europe of different speeds, about a core and outer core and so on, and these have in some senses accelerated. But none of this is particularly new either if we think back to the 1990s, the negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty, there were very similar debates about the finality of the integration process and whether all member states could proceed along the same track given their different perspectives on integration broadly declared. So as much as those disintegrative dynamics seem to be in the ascendancy currently, that's not necessarily going to remain the case and I think there is a very significant space there in which successful negotiation of the current enlargement round with the West Coast and potentially with Turkey can be achieved. Now just to say something about this relationship between widening and deepening and how it has evolved over the years, back in the 1960s when Britain was the elephant in the room, so to speak, occupied the position that Turkey does know, there were real fears amongst the core integration states that the British accession into the EU would dilute the impulses towards closer cooperation and even at that time there were suggestions once the British veto exercise by De Gaulle had been unblocked that the answer to accommodating this new presence within the integration scheme was some kind of variable geometry or multi-speed system. We can see this in the proposals of Darendorf, later of Leo Tendemans in 1975 in the report on European Union. So what I'm saying here is that the EU has always grappled with the tensions between impulses towards deeper integration economically and politically and the challenges posed by accommodating particularly larger states within the accession context. Now if we look at the multi-speed environment there are all sorts of elements that we can cite within the core integration frameworks. If we look at economic and monetary union prior to the current crisis there were members of the Eurozone and those who preferred to stay outside the Eurozone. If we look at Schengen there is another clear example where this multi-speed system has been operated. And at the moment there are very kind of conflicting elements where within the Eurozone there is this determination amongst core states to move ahead towards a much firmer political underpinning of the EMU but at the same time acknowledgement that there are real difficulties among some of those states in moving in those kind of directions. There are of course also other disintegrative impulses there from beyond the Eurozone. If we look at the debate in our nearest neighbour for example whether Britain might withdraw, whether a new British government post-election is able to successfully renegotiate the terms of British membership there's a lot there which is in doubt but nevertheless again is pointing towards a multi-speed trajectory. If we look at the development of secessionist movements across different regions of Europe from Scotland to Catalonia there were also plenty of disintegrative forces and disintegrative elements. Now I mentioned that because there has developed over time through the stewardship of the European Commission a particular model through which accession is achieved and a particular model through which the negotiations are operationalised. At the core of this is this strong conditionality element. There's an asymmetry of power if you like between inside and outside actors and this has allowed the EU to really penetrate very deeply the governance, architecture and both politics and policy within outside states and that's something I think that isn't acknowledged enough within the European Union. The demands that are asked of candidate states are now extraordinary relative even to the Eastern enlargement round and it was through the Eastern enlargement round in a sense that the Commission learning from some of the mistakes that it made but responding to different problems that it perceived within its negotiating environment actually developed a much higher threshold just around the kind of things that Haluk was mentioning. So the challenge if you like of negotiating accession has become a much more significant one than it was even for Poland, Hungary and other states that successfully entered the EU in 2004. The EU's model if you like is one which within academia which political science we refer to as the external incentives model. The EU provides rewards for progress within particular areas of policy within the 35 chapters and disincentives at the same time in the form of exclusion or the threat of exclusion at particular points in the process and there's been a particular trajectory through which the Commission has emphasized the rule of law and the deep embedding of the rule of law within candidate countries as they come closer to membership and this has been quantified in a sense by the employment of these benchmarks in a much more intrusive way in a much more intensive way than was used previously. Now the EU I suppose could point to certain successes within the enlargement sphere. Croatia will become the 28th member state when it joins on the 1st of July. There has been some progress in the western Balkans with the start of accession negotiations with Montenegro inside candidate status for Serbia. The relationship between Serbia and Kosovo seems to be improving much against expectations and I think you could argue that the transformative power of enlargement is evident in some of those areas but it continues to be the case that the political environment is extremely difficult and this is where we encounter this phenomenon of enlargement fatigue. Now again this is something that one finds in the discourse on enlargement in recent years but there's nothing new about this either if we go back to the late 1990s and the early 2000s you can track this in some way through the front pages of the Economist magazine where they regularly talked about the EU going cold on enlargement and so on. But there are particular phenomena I think which have made this that bit more difficult. One of them is the rather partial and incomplete accession of Bulgaria and Romania. This is something that has, if you like, crops up in almost every discussion especially about the western Balkans more than Turkey. There is a sense I think that the Bulgarians and Romanians were not ready for membership and that the EU in a sense turned a blind eyes to some of the terribly corrupt practices amongst elites in both countries and that in a sense accession was premature. Now I've spent a lot of time in both countries over the years and I certainly acknowledge there's some merit in that but I have taken the view and I really, really agree very strongly with you on the visa issue that the best way to manage some of those problems is to actually proceed at the political level and ensure the accession takes place and then allow a space for work on those things. When that candidate states has the certainty of actually becoming a member because this is something that comes through very strongly over recent accessions that EU policy only works if candidate states have a real and substantive sense not only that they're being treated fairly within the negotiations but also that the offer of membership which has been made is going to be followed through. In other words that there will be a successful negotiation, a successful outcome to the negotiations and over the last number of years and I absolutely agree with you Sarkozy and others were planting doubt for political reasons on a process that otherwise was designed to ensure that there would be compliance with EU demands and a successful outcome to negotiations. In the Bulgarian and Romanian case there's been another phenomenon more recently and that is this kind of targeting of both nationals in Britain, in Germany and in other countries by tabloid newspapers in particular all of this designed to give the impression that immigration is a huge problem when it actually isn't all of it designed to give the impression that there is significant pressure on labour markets when there isn't in the Irish case for example, in the British case there's a very thorough commission report on the impact of Eastern enlargement on labour markets and it demonstrates that for all of the political importance attached to this in Britain Germany accepted almost as many citizens from Central and East Europe in the run up to and after the 2004 accession and actually it's even more remarkable in the Irish case if we look at the last census about 4% of our population now are people who come from Poland, Hungary and other cases in the British case it's about 1.1% and I'm glad to say we haven't had that very nasty xenophobic edge to that kind of debate here but it is there and it's one of the things which has been if you like in the shadows as the current enlargement round has been progressing there's also something else that's disturbing about the current round and that is the creeping nationalisation or bilaterisation of the negotiations we saw some of this in respect of maritime boundaries in the relationship between Croatia and Slovenia we see obstacles being placed in front of candidate states regularly now much more regularly than in the past which points to this creeping bilaterisation so there are dangers there we see this in the case of Iceland as well the way the British and the Dutch tried to put in place a veto in a sense around reimbursement of deposits in that banking framework and finally I think here there is an increasing gap and I think this is really important and not understood very well between the EU's own vaunted standards expressed in the Copenhagen criteria on democracy the quality of democratic institutions and the kind of thresholds that are placed before candidate states on a very regular basis and if you look at the evidence of what's going on within the member states you can see that a clear majority of the current member states would actually fail the tests that are being set for the western Balkan states and for Turkey if you look at Romania and Hungary in particular the regression from democratic norms and democratic practices real concerns about the urban governments muzzling of the press and of the courts these are getting nothing like enough attention within the shadow of the Eurozone crisis but they're real and they're important and they point to a kind of hypocrisy within the process which has always been there and to some extent is understandable because when you're inside and negotiating with outsiders you have all the cards or all the advantages but these things are being increasingly exposed and it means I think that the EU's political capital or stock of goodwill within candidate states is evaporating now that has a simple knock on effect I think in terms of negotiations and that is that people who are engaged in sometimes very costly reform processes as the demands are made from Brussels to reform legal systems customs operations are other things that their incentive for reform is reduced very substantially by the kind of signals that they are getting regularly from Brussels and I think there are all kinds of ways in which this matters within the process the key thing is that you are trying in a sense in very difficult circumstances to keep reform processes ongoing but where the incentives and rewards available to those that are engaging in these often very costly processes are significantly less in rational terms than those that you might expect to produce a successful outcome so even if you look at this problem in those functional terms there are real problems in the way that the EU model has operated and is operating currently now finally I'll say this there is nothing particularly new here except that the overall political atmosphere is significantly worse than it was that the problems associated with the Eurozone have not just deflected attention from the goal of enlarging to the Balkans and Turkey but have also in some senses placed new obstacles before negotiators if you think about the treatment of Cyprus for example and you put yourself in the position of somebody in Belgrade or in Tirana and you try to relate that to concepts of solidarity and you wonder how is a small state you are going to be treated within the EU once you get over the line if you do get over the line of membership and even before you reach that point you have to wonder about whether the treatment of small states will actually change relative to the way it has operated previously okay now finally just to draw some of the strands of this together the EU it goes without saying has a very successful story to tell with Eastern enlargement three quarters of the current member states are actually former enlargement countries in other words weren't part of the original heterogeneous core the EU has continued to act as a magnet for outside states but its ability to actually act as a mobilizing agent or as an agent of reform has weakened very significantly and I think this is of real concern not just because in Bosnia for example the peace is very very fragile indeed without any constitutional settlement there and in all kinds of other respects there is a fragility about the process which kind of echoes the fragility within the Eurozone and within the EU if there are going to be successful outcomes to negotiations they crucially depend on the goodwill of the European Union as a negotiator on the kind of reward structures that are offered to candidate states but more important than any of that I think is whether the promises that have been made to Turkey and in the Western Balkan case at Thessaloniki in 2003 whether there is a real sense amongst negotiators that those promises are going to be honored at least in the sense of substantive negotiations with no predetermined outcome within them I think there is real doubt in the minds of many negotiators right across the Balkans and elsewhere about the seriousness of intent and indeed the capacity of the EU to deliver on enlargement in the current context thanks