In his speech held in the Konrad Adenauer Foundation after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble, Sarkozy advocated the strengthening of the EU "absorbing power" principle, namely the bloc's ability to admit new members, so as to assure the citizens that enlargement would not happen without their supervision.
He said he wanted to enable national parliaments to have better control of the pre-accession negotiations launched with Croatia and Turkey.
The French minister said that the national parliaments should supervise the Union each time it concluded one of the 35 chapters of the EU's acquis communautaire with candidate countries.
He said that the French parliament had recently adopted an amendment to the Constitution under which referendums would be held in the country on each new enlargement wave after the admission of Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia.