I would not put Croatia in the same basket with other Western Balkan countries, which also have a European perspective. Croatia's perspective is much closer than that of other Western Balkan countries, Juncker said.
Edmund Stoiber, the Prime Minister of the German federal state of Bavaria, also commented on EU enlargement.
In the next round of enlargement we should explain if the Union can take it and if there is a financial basis for enlargement. These are important issues that interest European citizens and if we do not discuss them we will have less and less support for enlargement, Stoiber said.
Stoiber recalled that the European Parliament had proposed creating "a privileged partnership" as a third category falling between the policy of good neighbourliness and full membership.
Last week the European Parliament passed a resolution, saying that the Union's absorption capacity should be taken into account when admitting new members, and offering countries that do not have an immediate European perspective a status between full membership and the policy of good neighbourliness. The European Parliament instructed the European Commission to define the Union's absorption capacity by the year's end.