Copenhagen criteria

It is impossible, we know.

Article 49 must be read together with the values in Article 2 and obviously must also be understood together with this so-called Copenhagen criteria, so rules for membership, obviously.

So the EU in this process looks not only at whether a state is geographically European or politically interested in joining, but it also looks at the stability of democratic institutions, democracy in general.

rule of law, human rights, judicial independence, and so on and so forth.