The European Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, said yesterday that the Gothenburg summit declaration made EU enlargement irreversible, despite Irish voters' rejection of the Nice Treaty.
Mr Prodi told a news conference in the Estonian capital Tallinn that the Irish vote must be respected, but ultimately "[The decisions made at] Gothenburg made enlargement irreversible."
Mr Prodi defended the slow pace of EU expansion, saying that the democratic process took time.
"When people blame us for being slow I say yes, we are slow because we are proceeding only under the process of the democratic will," he said.
He also called for greater discussion of the continent's future in light of the summit riots, in which anti-globalisation protesters and anarchists fought pitched battles with police.
"It is clear the radical expression that was a part of the Gothenburg riots . . . was very strong . . . We must raise the level of European debate and go to the fundamentals. Every country . . . must choose very carefully and know what there is at stake," Mr Prodi said.
Meanwhile, the Finnish Prime Minister, Mr Paavo Lipponen, strongly criticised Sweden for allowing riots during the summit.
However, he said the EU had no authority to interfere in a member country's handling of such incidents.
Mr Lipponen said: "A [summit] host country is definitely responsible for maintaining order. It's a sad state of affairs if the organisers are unable to keep things under control."
But he added: "There's no sense in ministers starting to organise another country's affairs. The EU has no authority to act in such matters in member states." In Brussels, EU sources said the Union was considering setting up an EU-wide database of information about troublemakers.
At the summit, EU leaders said that if the most advanced candidate states kept up the current pace of moves towards accession, the talks could be wrapped up by the end of 2002, enabling them to join by 2004.
Hungary yesterday applauded an EU pledge to conclude talks with the "best candidates" for membership in 2002, but analysts in Budapest warned that Poland could slow the progress of other front-runners.
"We are very pleased the EU confirmed and made a more precise timetable in Gothenburg," the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Gabor Horvath, said.
He said the declaration erased fears caused by the Irish rejection of Nice. "The declaration clearly states that the Irish outcome cannot and should not have an impact on enlargement," Mr Horvath said.
The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, told the Polish Prime Minister, Mr Jerzy Buzek, he hoped Poland would be ready to join the European Union by 2004 but said much work still had to be done.
The two leaders and several ministers were gathering for an annual German-Polish summit in the border city of Frankfurt-An-Der-Oder.
Germany and France called for an urgent EU meeting to discuss "a co-ordinated and hard response" to prevent a repeat of such incidents, which they said threatened democracy and undermined the message of peaceful demonstrators.
The treatment of children should be considered by the European Union when it is admitting new member states, Mr Philip O'Brien, UNICEF regional director for the former Soviet Union and the Baltics, said in an interview.