Way cleared for formal enlargement talks

Date: 10/09/1998

By Simon Taylor

FORMAL negotiations on the EU's most ambitious enlargement to date may start within seven weeks following the prompt submission of applicants' positions in seven policy areas.

Officials expect all six front-running candidates; the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus, to have filed their negotiating positions by next Tuesday's (15 September) deadline. This would pave the way for talks to begin by the end of October, in line with the ambitious timetable set by Austrian Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schüssel.

A senior official of the Austrian government, which holds the EU presidency until the end of the year, said Vienna was pleased that it would be "sitting down opposite the representatives from the candidate countries and beginning the real work".

France recently dropped its opposition to starting negotiations before 'screening' of all 31 chapters of the body of EU law (the acquis communautaire) has been completed.

Poland has led the field in the enlargement race, presenting its position paper to Austria's EU ambassador Manfred Scheich before the end of last month. The Hungarian and Estonian governments delivered their submissions earlier this week, with the Czechs, Slovenians and Cyprus expected to follow suit within days.

Four of the six candidate countries have set out their positions in seven of the areas of legislation covered so far under the screening process: science and research, telecoms and information technology, education and training, culture and audio-visual policy, industrial policy, small and medium-sized enterprises, and the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Hungary's paper goes further, taking in 11 chapters including company law, fisheries, statistics and consumer and health protection; while Estonia has topped that by presenting its position on 12 chapters, including the free movement of goods. Cyprus, the only one of the six 'first-wavers' which has not had to make the transition to a market economy, has boasted that it can comply 100% with EU legislation on the first seven chapters.

There are, however, a number of stages to go through before the negotiations get under way.

First, each country's 'offer' will be examined by the Commission's task force on enlargement. Its assessment is seen as crucial to ensuring that political motives do not influence decisions on an applicant's suitability.

Once the Commission has made its evaluation, its recommendations will be passed to Coreper (the committee of EU ambassadors), but detailed technical analysis of the candidates' positions will be carried out by a Council of Ministers working group.

By the end of October, once member states have delivered their assessment of the candidates' positions, Scheich will sit down with the six applicants and outline what the EU finds acceptable or unacceptable in the offers on the table. This will be the start of formal negotiations.

Austrian officials hope these discussions will be completed in time for EU foreign ministers to give their approval at a meeting on 10 November.

Meanwhile, Malta is waiting to find out whether it can rejoin the front runners for EU membership following last weekend's election victory for the pro-Union National Party.

Malta's bid to join the Union was put on hold in 1996 after the election of the Labour government under Alfred Sant, but one of Nationalist Party leader Fenech Adami's first announcements after the votes had been counted this week was that he intended to "reactivate" the application.

Once the Commission has been formally notified of this, it will first have to check that its 1993 opinion on the country's readiness for membership is still valid before referring the matter to the Council of Ministers for a decision.