France wants high-level panel to define the EU’s external borders

France’s EU affairs minister has called for a high-level panel to discuss the EU’s external borders as a way of calming public fears about enlargement.

Speaking in Brussels on Tuesday (17 July) Jean-Pierre Jouyet said: "There should be a reflection on Europe’s external borders." He suggested setting up a "working group or a group of wise men to say ‘these are the problems’".

Jouyet said that it was important to have a debate on the limits to enlargement after the rejection of the EU constitution in a referendum in France. French citizens were asking, he said, when a "headlong rush" towards taking in ever more countries would end.

He stressed that the borders of Europe should not be defined geographically but that the Union was an "association of values".

EU diplomats say that France wants to set up a working group either within the Council of Ministers or a high-level group of senior politicians and academics such as the group under former Dutch prime minister Wim Kok, which drafted a report on the EU’s poor performance on creating jobs and growth.

The group would present its findings under the French presidency in the second half of 2008.

Portugal, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, is reluctant to hold a potentially divisive debate on enlargement during its term of office. Prime Minister José Socrates has said that he cannot prevent a member state raising any issues it wants but has called for the EU to act "responsibly" and honour its commitment to negotiating membership with Turkey.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said that Turkey has "no place in Europe". Last month, France blocked the opening of negotiations with Turkey on economic and monetary union, with French diplomats saying that the chapter is only relevant for countries which will one day join the EU. But Sarkozy has stopped short of halting the negotiating process altogether, partly because of the impact on France’s economic relations with Turkey.

The French president has proposed a Mediterranean Union which Turkey could join along with other states in the region.

Jouyet stressed that the union was not an alternative to "very strong relations" with Turkey and would complement and go beyond existing regional initiatives such as the Barcelona process.

But Sarkozy has delayed the call for a debate on Turkey’s EU membership bid to avoid a negative impact on the sensitive political situation in Turkey ahead of important elections on Sunday (22 July). The election will clarify the level of support for the ruling AK Party (AKP), successor to banned Muslim parties, and in particular whether the country’s president should be directly elected. Opposition members of parliament repeatedly rejected AKP’s candidate for the country’s presidency, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, because of what they see as his Islamist leanings, while the country’s military establishment has expressed concern about a drift away from Turkey’s secular tradition.

• The French government has announced its priorities for its presidency of the EU in the second half of 2008. Jouyet said on Tuesday that the priorities would be boosting growth, competitiveness and jobs, improving energy security and fighting climate change, preparing Europe for the future by strengthening research and innovation and deepening relations with Europe’s neighbours especially in the Mediterranean and central Asia.

Jouyet said that the presidency would focus on maximising eurozone growth through better co-ordination of economic policy and a dialogue between the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Eurogroup, the meeting of finance ministers from eurozone countries. He said that this should be a "discrete, responsible dialogue" between the presidents of the two institutions and stressed that France was not questioning the independence of the ECB.

Jouyet said that the presidency would focus on protecting the security of energy supplies and ensuring that energy policy contributed to the fight against climate change. He said France would explore ways of promoting clean production through the tax system.

France’s EU affairs minister has called for a high-level panel to discuss the EU’s external borders as a way of calming public fears about enlargement.