Munich - Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Ruppel, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said Saturday he did not expect the 27-member bloc to suffer from "enlargement fatigue.""There should be no enlargement fatigue, we need to grow. It is much like bicycle riding: If you stop pedalling you lose your balance," Ruppel said.
The EU went through a "Big Bang" expansion in 2004, when 10 new member states joined the bloc. Romania and Bulgaria then raised the total number of EU countries to 27 in January 2007.
The minister was responding to a question posed to him during a security conference in Munich by his colleague from Azerbaijan, Elmar Mammadyarov.
Addressing a debate on European stability, Mammadyarov underlined the benefits that stability brings to strengthening a country's institutions and underscored the "extremely important" role of the EU's neighbourhood policy.