Hungary and Poland at odds over place on praesidium

Date: 21/03/02

By Martin Banks

A POWER struggle has broken out between countries bidding to join the EU over who should represent them on the Convention's praesidium.

It follows a decision to invite one representative from the candidate countries to join the powerful 12-member forum.

The individual will be chosen by the 56 members who represent national parliaments in the 15 member and 13 accession states on the Convention.

Poland, as the largest of the states hoping to join the Union in 2004, is the front runner for the coveted post.

But other states, such as Hungary, are keen to land the 13th place on the praesidium.

The battle is set to overshadow the latest meeting of the Convention, in Brussels today and tomorrow (21 and 22 March) where delegates are expected to rubberstamp the invitation for candidate states to join the steering committee.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the praesidium last Thursday after some Convention members, including Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde, said the applicant states were being denied a voice in some of the most important talks in the EU's history. Senior officials have since been lobbying behind the scenes for their respective countries.

One Hungarian diplomat said: 'Hungary has closed 24 of the 30 accession chapters - only Cyprus has closed as many - so has good grounds for saying the member should be Hungarian.'

But a Polish EU official said: 'The representative should surely come from the biggest country and that is Poland.'

The Convention is intended to pave the way for a future Union comprising up to 28 member states and will report to national governments in 2003. Convention spokesman, Nikolaus Meyer Landrut, said the exact status of the praesidium's 13th member had still to be worked out.

He added: 'The chosen candidate will be left to the applicant states themselves.'