Huebner: Turkey may join EU in 2015

”But of course a massive change will occur as the Union grows to absorb Turkey and possibly Ukraine by around 2015. These two countries will add around 125 million citizens to the Union, bringing the total population to around 635 million or 40 percent more than today,” she said.

Huebner said that with such as unprecedented enlargement, the EU would face a tough choice of either significantly increasing its budget or trimming some policies, which include aid for poor regions and generous assistance to farmers.

She added that the entry of Turkey and Ukraine might require changing EU institutional rules which governments agreed last year when they signed the bloc’s first constitution.