EU enlargement: Chicken or Kiev?

My comment to an article of The Economist called ‘Enlarging the European Union: Chicken or Kiev?’, published on the magazine’s website on 31 May 2008:

Every enlargement leads to “devaluation” of the European Union – politically, economically, and structurally. The EU of 27 already has essential problems with internal decision-making process. Euro-Constitution (and now the Lisbon Treaty) ratification saga is a good prove of that.

Further enlargement of the EU is to be carefully considered. If the European Union wants to save itself as a strong supranational organization claiming to be a centre of world power, new mechanisms of enlargement should be presented. The elaboration of these mechanisms will take some time. But an enlargement-delay is not an obstacle for building the all-European free democratic space. It is already successfully building up – by the Council of Europe with its 47 member states, including Turkey, Ukraine, and also Russia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, to give just a few.

If the EU is not ready for a “big enlargement”, it will be reasonable to strengthen its cooperation with the Council of Europe to work out new effective instruments to build free and democratic Europe of 47 without any dividing lines and prejudices.

P.S. Of course, it would be great if Ukraine become member of the EU immediately. At least, because of a possibility to travel freely inside the Schengen zone for every Ukrainian. But as today both Ukraine and the EU are not ready for that, we have to achieve our goals using available instruments, such an ENP.

Link to the comment and the article:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11455117&mode=comment&intent=readBottom