Barroso buries the good news…

"I just went to Finland," said the correspondent of a major Italian daily when I saw him in the Metro on Monday, "for no reason at all."

It was a comment that might have defined the kind of relatively news-less week that has come to define the EU’s continuing "period of reflection". But then European Commission President José Manuel Barroso saved the typesetters’ day, declaring that further expansion of the European Union would have to wait until all that reflection produces a new treaty.

The news that future EU enlargement would be put on hold after Bulgaria and Romania have joined managed to overshadow the news that Bulgaria and Romania will in fact join.

Still, newspapers in those two countries celebrated getting in at the last minute. A sampling from Romanian daily Cotidianul: "Everybody finds Romania’s accession useful as it could seal the eastern borders of the Union. Romania’s European road remains the only way out of servitude. EU accession will push future generations towards a more dignified status. "

But what about countries on the waiting list? "While Barroso’s comments seem to have momentarily shut the door on EU hopefuls like Croatia and Turkey," comments Deutsche Welle, "they also mean a renewed focus on resolving the constitution issue, which had been postponed after the constitutional draft was rejected last year in France and the Netherlands."

Turkish daily Zaman says the announcement puts "question-marks over the prospects of Turkey joining the bloc of countries".

The English-language Turkish Daily News notes that Ankara had been preparing for the Commission’s keenly awaited report on Turkey’s progress towards membership. "In a move to deflect EU criticism before the release of the report," it writes, "the Turkish Parliament convened last week, nearly two weeks earlier than scheduled, to discuss a series of EU-inspired reforms."

An analyst for the Basque news agency EiTB, the spectacularly named Jesús Torquemada, sums up the issue nicely. "An old problem comes up once more," he writes. "What is the limit of the Union? Will all the European countries become members of the EU?"

The UK’s Daily Telegraph says "Barroso’s call poses a particular dilemma for Britain, one of the strongest supporters of EU enlargement and almost the only major power supporting the membership of Turkey and Croatia, the two countries next in line. But the government is keen to avoid any text that contains significant or large parts of the old constitution. That could lead to demands that it be put to the British public in a referendum." Perish the thought.

Writing in the Independent under the headline, ‘Europe: the issue that dare not speak its name’, Denis MacShane, one of Britain’s many former ministers for Europe, says his countrymen need to come to grips with the EU.

"Another new treaty is generating itself into existence unnoticed by a British political-media class that wishes Europe would remain a sleeping non-beauty unable to be kissed into life," he writes. "Once again Britain risks being left behind and, as in the past, reacting defensively with nervous irritation to the ideas shaped in other EU capitals."

• Craig Winneker is a freelance writer based in Brussels.

"I just went to Finland," said the correspondent of a major Italian daily when I saw him in the Metro on Monday, "for no reason at all."

• Primary Source