European Commission President Romano Prodi said today that an EU summit declaration made enlargement of the bloc irreversible, despite Irish voters' rejection of the Nice Treaty.
At the weekend summit in Gothenburg, 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.
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.
The Nice Treaty approved the restucturing of EU institutions to allow the bloc to expand.
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," Mr Prodi said.