Before exploring the future, it might be useful to take a poised look at the current state of the Union. I will be brief:

• The decision-making and action-taking machinery is still operating, but its effectiveness, transparency and democratic accountability is becoming increasingly insufficient. The decisions taken at the European Summit in Nice do not seem to me to do much to remedy this worrying sense of drift.
• The beginnings of a "Defence Europe" are promising. For the time being, this means focusing on the creation of a rapid intervention force, so that Europeans can carry out humanitarian missions and peace-keeping or -maintenance actions either with or without the participation of the Americans. But there are still outstanding problems, especially in relation to NATO, and European countries will have to draw their own conclusions - including budgetary ones. They have managed to avoid thepitfalls of ideology and dogma. We now await the next steps.
• Although the results from Nice are disappointing in terms of making common institutions more relevant, they nevertheless pave the way for large-scale enlargement.

And from this point of view we can understand the satisfaction of the candidate countries, which I share with them. That said, there are three fundamental questions that can help focus discussions over the next three years when Member States plan to review the institutional system in 2004.

1. What ultimate purpose can we reasonably assign to Greater Europe (first a 28-country Europe, and then with the Balkans and other candidates, extending to 33 or 35 countries)?
2. What are the appropriate methods for making Europe a success: which institutions, or even what constitution should we have, what place will there be for the charter of fundamental rights?
3. How can we combine enlargement with deepening? A classic yet fundamentalquestion. Would it be useful to forge an "Avant-garde", or reinforced co-operation?

Articles by Jacques Delors :

• Jacques Delors in the Het Financieele Dagblad
• Jacques Delors in The Daily Telegraph
• Jacques Delors in El Pais
• "Europe must use bonds to fight the debt crisis on two fronts" article in The Guardian
• President Barroso's Road Map