East European solidarity founders in race for accession

Date: 01/08/1996

By Thomas Klau

AS ENLARGEMENT slowly emerges as a firm landmark in Europe's political agenda, initial cracks in the tenuous solidarity between Central and Eastern European accession candidates are turning into open antagonism.

Just over seven months after EU leaders meeting in Madrid gave the ten applicants a near-promise that the first membership negotiations would begin roughly six months after the end of the current Intergovernmental Conference on Union reform, the jockeying for accession has begun in earnest.

With Hungary leading the attack, the economically most advanced Central and Eastern Europeans are lobbying for a clear distinction to be made between those countries seen as serious candidates for membership and those whose economic or political underperformance is likely to condemn them to a lengthy period of waiting.

The European Commission and EU governments still have to settle the politically sensitive issue of whether to begin Eastern enlargement negotiations with all ten candidates at once, regardless of their reform success, or only with those deemed ready for swift accession.

According to Commission officials, their assessment of each country's performance will be based, albeit not exclusively, on its answers to the

180-page enlargement questionnaires which each was asked to complete.

Following the submission of almost all of the completed questionnaires by the scheduled date of 26 July, the Commission's enlargement experts will now spend several months sifting through, evaluating and analysing the more than 20,000 pages of information supplied.

The data, to be updated - if the need arises - at the Commission's request, will then serve as the basis for drafting its avis (opinion) on each country's readiness for membership.

Yet some experts strongly recommend formally opening negotiations with all ten enlargement experts simultaneously, regardless of the outcome of this exercise. According to them, early differentiation would be a politically damaging course bound to reinforce feelings of rejection in those countries lagging behind.

Others have argued against starting negotiations with countries patently not ready for membership, insisting that pursuing such a course would turn the talks into a meaningless ritual.

Initially, most enlargement candidates maintained a guarded silence on the issue. But in a clear indication that

the era of Central and East European community of interest is over, Hungary's Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacz is now openly pleading for early differentiation.

Senior Hungarian officials have begun lobbying vigorously against all enlargement candidates participating in the negotiations exercise at once, arguing this might slow down talks with the more serious candidates as the EU would then face the technical problem of having to deal with 12 countries at once.

“This would be unprecedented,” said a member of the Hungarian delegation. “Never in its history has the EU negotiated with so many countries at once. There might be a manpower problem.”

According to these officials, the simultaneous opening of discussions would also create another, more political problem. “It would dramatize enlargement's short-term financial implications for the EU,” said one. “The costs of enlargement are going to affect the Union gradually, because not all countries will join at once. But people will not be aware of this if the EU begins to negotiate with everybody at once.”

While leading enlargement contenders such as Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic have started to plead more or less openly for early differentiation, Slovakia - the only membership candidate endangering its chances of early accession because of deficient democratic practices - has received another warning shot across its bow.

In a comment which caused considerable furore in Bratislava, Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl publicly declared during a recent visit to neighbouring Vienna that Slovakia still basically qualified for EU membership, but “unfortunately not at the present time”.

Kohl added that he regretted the fact that the evolution of Slovakia's domestic political landscape had such a negative impact on the country's reputation abroad.

The chancellor's statement, which echoed a stream of earlier Union criticism, was seen by observers as a clear signal that unless Slovakian Prime Minister Vladimar Meciar's government mends its ways in the coming 18 months, the opening round of the next EU enlargement talks might well not include Bratislava - whatever the outcome of the general debate over differentiation.