Encouraging signals are the most applicants can hope for

Date: 10/12/1998

By Simon Taylor

ALTHOUGH the Austrians have achieved their goal of getting formal negotiations with the applicant countries off the ground under their presidency, the Vienna summit will illustrate just how slowly the enlargement process is moving.

The six countries lagging behind the first-wave group had been hoping to be invited to join the party in Vienna, giving them the chance to catch up with the front runners.

But EU leaders were given the excuse they had been looking for to delay expanding the list of leading candidates earlier this month when the Commission presented a series of reports on applicants' progress towards meeting the requirements for entry.

The generally negative tone of those reports has put paid to the hopes of Latvia, Lithuania and the new EU-friendly governments in Malta and Slovakia that the Vienna summit would provide the breakthrough they had been looking for.

Only Latvia was told it had moved far enough to deserve a decision to be invited "by the end of 1999", while the others were urged to maintain the pace of reform. The hopes of Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami's new government in Malta for a positive response to its renewed membership bid have already been dashed by the Commission's decision to delay a crucial report on its application until next year.

So far the applicant countries have reacted with remarkable patience both to the slow pace of enlargement and the apparent lack of willingness on the part of existing member states to contemplate letting in more countries. Negotiations have only covered seven areas (less than one-third) of the vast range of EU rules, although Estonia and Hungary were prepared to do a deal on more than ten chapters.

The first-wave applicants have been promised two further negotiating sessions over the coming 12 months, which should mean than about half of the ground will have been covered by the end of the Finnish presidency in December 1999.

While the second-wave applicants have meekly accepted the gloomy political signals on their chances of joining the front runners, the period after Vienna may see them beginning to express their frustration at the Union's sluggish approach.

Slovakia is already pushing hard for an updated report on reforms introduced by the new government by next spring, but that would mean the Commission starting work now, before new Slovakian Prime Minister Dzurinda has had time to make any real changes. This seems unlikely.

Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen's remark that no new countries would be able to join the negotiation process until the second half of 1999 received a dignified response from the candidates with the best chance of joining the first wave.

But they may begin demanding some reward for their efforts before the year is out.

The wiser countries out there are fully aware that enlargement cannot gather any real pace for at least another year because Germany's term at the helm of the EU will be dominated by the Agenda 2000 reforms.

Before the Union is ready to extend its borders eastwards, governments will also have to agree on a range of tricky institutional reforms, including a reweighting of votes in the Council of Ministers, setting new limits on the number of Commissioners and deciding on the share-out of posts between new and existing members, and scrapping the veto on a range of issues.

This process will take at least six months and will not begin until Finland takes over the presidency in the second half of the year.

So what will happen at Vienna? EU leaders will take the opportunity to send more encouraging signals to the east European applicants, in a bid to strengthen their resolve to maintain the pace of reform.

Their most difficult task will be to find a way of recognising the achievements of the very best performers - Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic - while saying something meaningful to the stragglers such as Romania and Bulgaria.

One country which will be lucky to come away from Vienna with any positive signals is Turkey.

Its aggressive demands for the extradition of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan and its spiritual, if not official, support for the wave of consumer boycotts of Italian goods have severely damaged relations with the EU.

Ankara will be fortunate indeed if the Union's message on the country's accession hopes is as positive as at last December's Luxembourg summit, which Turkey saw as a major snub.