Presenting the programme of the German EU presidency, which begins on January 1 next year, Schoenfelder said the EU would be facing a lot of difficulties in the 2008/2009 period, including the number of parliamentarians to be elected to the European Parliament.
Everyone knows that we will have a lot of difficulties in the 2008/2009 period. Speaking of the elections for the European Parliament, we will have to know how many parliamentarians we will be choosing, and regarding the European Commission, I should recall that the Nice Treaty provides that after 2009 the number of commissioners must be less than the number of member states, the German ambassador said.
Since the EU functions on the basis of the Nice Treaty, which clearly defines the number of parliamentarians from each of the 27 member states, when asked by Hina if he expected Croatia to join the EU before elections for the European Parliament in May 2009, Schoenfelder replied: That's a possibility. We must know if this possibility will become a reality. We must know how many seats Croatia will have in Parliament.
When further pressed to say whether it meant that he was counting on Croatia becoming an EU member before the 2009 polls, he added: I cannot be counting on anything in that respect, I mean, I'm not ruling out anything. We'll see what happens.
Schoenfelder said in his presentation that Croatia's and Turkey's accession processes would be separated during the German presidency of the EU.
No matter what happens with the Turkish talks, the talks with Croatia will continue. We hope that we will not just open some of the chapters, but also close them.