Applicants push for swift progress in talks

Date: 23/03/2000

By Simon Taylor

THE second wave of candidates bidding for EU membership will push for rapid progress when negotiations on their terms of entry get under way in earnest in May.

The six countries which were invited to the negotiating table at last December's Helsinki summit hope to reach provisional agreements on between five and eight areas EU legislation quickly.

The six will set out their opening positions on these relatively uncontroversial 'chapters' at a meeting with European Commission and Union officials next Tuesday (28 March), with formal talks due to start two months later, on 26 May.

At next week's meeting, the 'Helsinki six' will explain their approach towards policies on small and medium-sized enterprises, science and research, education and training, external economic relations, and foreign and security issues.

Malta, Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania have been invited to present their positions on a further three chapters, ranging from industrial policy and telecoms to culture and audio-visual policy, competition and statistics. Bulgaria will table its positions on six areas of policy and Romania only five.

Closing chapters quickly is a key priority for the second-wavers, which are battling to catch up with the six countries which began entry talks back in 1998. Members of the first group have already provisionally completed negotiations on between seven and 11 areas of EU law.

Many countries in the second group have expressed frustration that the Union is limiting negotiations with them to a maximum of eight chapters per country at this stage, and does not plan to start talks on more areas until later in the year.

Applicant state diplomats argue that they are unlikely to face many problems in persuading the EU to close negotiations in these areas quickly because their national legislation will be in line with Union rules by the time they join. They have therefore made few requests for extra time to comply, although Latvia is seeking the right to continue its free-trade agreement with Ukraine after it becomes an EU member.

But Union diplomats warn that reaching provisional accords in all the chapters due to be opened in May may not be as easy as the candidates hope. "It may be possible to make rapid progress but on some chapters there are wider questions, for example, of the approach a country takes on state aid," said one, who added that the external economic relations dossier could also prove "tricky" because the EU would ask applicants to scrap special trade agreements with their neighbours.

Talks with the second-wave applicants are getting under way as tempers fray in the leading group, with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski warning this week that enlargement could be threatened by a growing "virus of selfishness" in the EU and Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban questioning whether the Union genuinely intended to accept his country as a 'real' member.

The second wave of candidates bidding for EU membership will push for rapid progress when negotiations on their terms of entry get under way in earnest in May.