From Madrid to Novosibirsk

What should the final size of the EU be? It has essentially become convential wisdom that the EU will soon absorb the complete Balkan, and then Ukraine and Turkey are waiting.

Some days ago the new report of the Commissioner for enlargement has been published. While there was some
critisism here and there of some of the countries, all in all nothing has changed in the determination of the
EU Burocracy to extend the Union even further.

When it comes to the nation states, support for enlargement comes most notably from Britain, but also Poland has always pushed for a larger Union. At the same time both countries allways have followed a strategy to undermine the poltical dimension of the Union and stop further integration. The objective is to create a Union of a size which becomes ungouvernable and therefore bring it back to a point where it becomes a pure free trade zone. This is prefectly legitimate, however countries which would prefer a more integrated Union have to realise that this simply won't work with over 30 different countries.

Sarkozy has made it clear that he doesn't want Turkey to enter the Union, and so has Angela Merkel albeit less aggresively. This is rather unhelpfull, because it doesn't adress the very real problem of over extending the union (none of them has said anything about the Balkan states) and at the same time it stokes negative feelings on all sides.

The only tenable solution for this is to create a Union which allows for different speeds of integration which is, I guess, very difficult to actually implement. However, in the long run it is the only way this can work.