(story to be published in tomorrow's issue, March 17)
European Union talks over eastward enlargement have run into frustration on both sides, with leading candidates upset at slow progress towards membership and the EU tetchy about their new would-be partners. Countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which entered membership talks two years ago, are pressing the EU in vain to up the pace and open the way for more progress in talks. "We have now been negotiating for two years. We have to recognise that the phase of making political declarations is over and it's time to begin confronting views on the real problems, including the most sensitive issues," a senior Hungarian diplomat said recently. He said the EU's negotiating positions in talks had been evasive, consisting of questions to candidates rather than laying down the EU's own positions. The EU's stance is it will not be pushed: whatever the political importance of its first expansion into the former communist bloc, candidate countries will advance only as and when they adopt and implement thousands of pages of EU laws. "We are entering troubled waters now," one EU official said. "They (the candidate countries) are complaining because they do not close enough chapters of negotiations. But we cannot close a chapter before there's sufficient progress... So they are getting nervous." The EU opened formal membership talks with Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus in March 1998. It intends to open talks on the most difficult issues like agriculture and the free movement of people with them before the end of June. But it has also to tie up talks on more than a dozen easier issues with those countries. Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and Malta joined the six in talks last month and will sit down with the EU on just the easiest issues on March 28. Some of them are determined to catch up with the countries which had a head start of two years. With a minority government in power in the Czech Republic and elections due in Poland and Hungary in the 2000-2002 period the three governments want to show tangible progress towards their ambitious 2003 target date for joining the bloc. They do not want to see any of the countries which joined talks two years catching up, diplomats said. A Polish official confirmed Warsaw's concerns on Tuesday, saying the EU had let the admission of six new countries to membership talks slow down progress by the original six. "There's a great concern because Poland had hoped to close five chapters, and there have been unconfirmed rumours that they will not be closed," the official said. "The blame is not only on the candidates, but also on the work of the EU Commission." But EU diplomats said it was time to tell the ambitious candidates some home truths and shatter illusions. "We have now come to the much more difficult stage of negotiations and there are huge problems to overcome," one said. "For years we have told them things they wanted to hear. Now it's time to be more realistic. The problems are very difficult to solve." EU chief negotiator in the enlargement talks Eneko Landaburu said there was no prospect of loosening the EU's terms to make membership easier and quicker. "...We are negotiating an enlargement of the EU which has to be a success for the candidate countries, so we have to prepare these countries so that when they arrive they can draw the maximum benefit of the advantages of the Union," he told Reuters. "And at the same time we have to have as an objective that these new accessions by these new countries does not weaken the union." Before the EU can open talks with candidate countries on the most difficult issues like agriculture and the free movement of workers it must also agree among itself. Some diplomats predict that the EU might fail to agree and miss an end-June target date for starting talks on the remaining negotiating issues with the six front-running countries. Despite intense pressure from candidate countries the EU has declined to set a target date for its first expansion. But it has undertaken to be ready to admit new members by 2003. Commission President Romano Prodi has also said that he wants the first expansion to have taken place by the time he leaves office in 2005. But diplomats said the problems were so serious it was unlikely that any of the countries would have joined by then. "I think it will be very difficult for any of the countries to become members during Prodi's presidency," one diplomat said.
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