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Founded in 1957 by six pioneering nations seeking an end to war and conflict in Europe, today's 27-member European Union (EU) has grown into the world's most sophisticated experiment in regional cooperation and collective sovereignty.

The original EU members Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany still play a powerful role in determining EU policy and future direction.

But successive enlargements have also seen the entry of other influential nations including Britain in 1973, Spain in 1986 and Poland in 2004 whose clout can be felt both within the EU's corridors of power and on the wider regional and global stage.

"Enlargement is one of the EU's most powerful policy tools," says a senior EU diplomat. In the 1980s, the prospect of joining Europe helped spur democracy in Greece, Spain and Portugal. In the late 1990s, it was the pull of the EU that helped transform central and eastern Europe into modern market-driven countries.

The EU's big-bang expansion in May 2004 to include eight former communist nations as well as Malta and Cyprus was the bloc's fifth and most ambitious enlargement to date.

Continuing the process, Bulgaria and Romania were welcomed into the club on January 1, 2007. Their entry symbolized a further "reunification of our European family", said an enthusiastic European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

EU policymakers insist they are still committed to using the bloc's "soft power" ability to bring peace, stability and prosperity to countries in its immediate neighborhood.

But EU leaders, voicing increasing wariness of further expansion, now insist that the future pace of enlargement will be dictated by the ability of present members to "absorb and integrate" the mainly poorer states knocking at EU gates.

Membership negotiations are under way with Croatia and at least partially with Turkey. Macedonia has been recognized as eligible for entry although actual accession discussions have yet to begin.

EU enlargement chief Olli Rehn also remains adamant that the club has not closed its doors to western Balkan nations which he says have a "clear European perspective".

However, there is no denying that the EU is in the midst of a sudden attack of expansion jitters.

The going is getting tougher even for new members. Several "old" EU nations have maintained restrictions on the free movement of citizens from central and eastern European countries which joined the bloc in 2004.

Also Romania and Bulgaria are subject to stringent "accompanying measures" the toughest ever imposed by the EU on acceding nations which could include trade and aid sanctions if they do not fight corruption and organized crime.

With many in Brussels and other EU capitals talking openly of "enlargement fatigue", Barroso is among those insisting that the bloc must decide on the future of the failed constitution which was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005 before any further expansion.

Officials in Brussels argue that the EU needs a new treaty to ensure efficient and effective decision-making in an enlarged Europe. There is also concern at the budgetary costs of further expansion.

Most significantly, however, EU-hopefuls are being told they must wait patiently in the wings while the bloc's leaders try to ease public fears about increased east-west immigration flows.

Much-publicized French public concerns about a flood of cheap "Polish plumbers" who would steal French jobs are believed to have convinced some voters to reject the EU constitution. Fears over the entry of mainly Muslim Turkey may have contributed to the cold-shouldering of the treaty by French and Dutch nationals.

"We know we cannot take in every state that wants to join," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after EU leaders meeting in Brussels on December 14-15 last year adopted a go-slow stance on further expansion.

Backing Merkel's stance are the leaders of Luxembourg, Belgium and The Netherlands. France is also wary about swift, further enlargement.

Although Britain, Sweden and most of the central and eastern European states want expansion to continue, leaders at the summit agreed that new countries will only be admitted if existing EU states are satisfied they can deal with financial, social and institutional burdens the applicants pose.

(China Daily via agencies March 23, 2007)