German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday spoke against a rapid expansion of the European Union after Bulgaria and Romania join next year, DPA reported. "We have to realize that we cannot take any new members on board in the foreseeable future," the chancellor said in her weekly podcast, in which she outlined the goals of Germany's six-month presidency of the EU beginning in January. "Even membership negotiations with Turkey should be conducted in an open-ended fashion," she said, adding that Europe needed to state clearly where its borders were. The chancellor, who has just returned from a visit to Turkey in which she discussed the issue of EU expansion, favours a loose form of associate membership for countries on the bloc's outer borders.
