On Tuesday 31 March, EAPN attended a policy briefing meeting with Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn. The Commissioner presented the work on enlargement in the past five years and made the point that enlargement shouldn’t be blocked, although some EU leaders should like to put the Enlargement process on hold until the EU starts to recover economically. Discussions focused on political questions, but very little was said about social and employment issues. However, EAPN addressed Commissioner Rehn on the powers the EU really has in negotiating with the candidate countries on tackling poverty and reforming social welfare, when the EU has shown little courage to look at its own situation. Commissioner Rehn replied that a benchmarking system has been developed and proves to be more efficient than previous enlargement rounds, notably for Turkey. This question on the social chapter has been registered.
EAPN
The European Anti-Poverty Network
