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EU unlikely to expand into post-Soviet east in next decade

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Poland and Sweden have in a joint strategy paper indicated the EU is unlikely to invite any of its post-Soviet neighbours to join the bloc in the next 10 years. Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski and Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt set out their vision for the EU's future relations with neighbouring countries in a letter on 6 October to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and neighbourhood commissioner Stefan Fuele. The letter noted that Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine could one day become EU members, unlike countries in north Africa and the Middle East. "Some [countries bordering the EU] are European and thus enjoy special status in accordance with the treaties, others will remain neighbours of Europe," it said. But the four-page-letter nowhere said the EU should give the group 'an enlargement perspective.' It instead set out an everything-but-enlargement vision in which the six gradually adopt the E...