BRUSSELS (AFP) — EU leaders agreed Friday to set up a "reflection group" to consider Europe's long-term future, but watered down a French demand that the committee determine how far the bloc should expand.
The leaders meeting at a summit in Brussels named former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez to lead the review, said a spokesman for Portugal, which holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of the month.
He will be aided by former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Jorma Ollila, head of Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia.
"We had many reservations towards the original idea," Czech European affairs minister Aleksandr Vondra told reporters after EU heads of state and government discussed the proposal.
"We were afraid that was a way to stop the enlargement process so we focused on the issues that were not on that," he said.
"The group cannot propose any changes to the enlargement process and is not here to make any institutional changes. Like this, we can live with this reflection group."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy in July proposed setting up a group of "wise men" to debate where the European Union's boundaries should lie and whether Turkey should be included.
He said France would not block Turkey's EU membership talks if the group was formed.
"In this new Europe ... the question of frontiers will have to be asked. Should Europe expand indefinitely, and if it does what consequences would that have?" Sarkozy told reporters after the summit.
"It's quite obvious that this is a question for the group of wise men."
But the idea has been met with a lukewarm reception at the European Commission, the EU's executive body, and even among the leaders themselves.
"We think we are able to reflect by ourselves," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Friday before the summit got underway. "It's something that we reluctantly agreed because it is important for one big member state."
Under its mandate, the committee would be tasked with anticipating and considering the long-term goals and challenges for Europe to 2030.
Among those tasks is "the reinforcement and modernisation of a European model which reconciles economic success and social solidarity," along with considering migration, climate change and the fight against terrorism.
Despite the fact that no nation expressed strong support for the project, it could be enough to secure French agreement not to hamper Turkey's membership talks.
Turkey began those accession negotiations in October 2005 but it has only managed to open four of the 35 chapters, or policy areas, that all candidates must complete to join.
Croatia, which began talks the same day, has opened 12.
Turkey's talks are expected to last at least a decade, with no guarantee of membership at the end of it all. The process has been hampered by Ankara's refusal to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot ships and planes.
France, which takes over the EU presidency in the second half of next year, has raised concerns about at least one of the negotiating chapters -- economic and monetary policy -- that Turkey wants to open.
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