Stockholm faces daunting test of its ambition

Date: 14/12/00

By Simon Taylor

LIKE Saint Göran, immortalised in a famous statue in Stockholm cathedral, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh faces a daunting challenge. But instead of a dragon, she will be battling the many-headed issue of EU enlargement.

The Swedes had planned for a major breakthrough in the enlargement process during their presidency, hoping that they would be able to set a date for taking in the first new members before their concluding summit in Göteborg in June.

As if that was not ambitious enough, the Swedes wanted to fight for the principle that each applicant country should be allowed to join the Union when it is ready, without waiting for Poland to qualify.

But despite Lindh's powers of persuasion and her ability to fight her corner, the Swedes look set for defeats on both fronts.

Their hopes of making enough progress in negotiations to be able to fix a deadline for the first wave of new members have been dashed by a combination of well-intentioned attempts to keep up the momentum of enlargement talks and plain old-fashioned political disagreement.

Stockholm had been gearing up to launch negotiations on some of the most difficult subjects, such as agricultural subsidies, which threaten to delay the date when the first countries join the Union. But the European Commission's road map for enlargement, which was approved by EU leaders at the Nice summit last weekend, postpones negotiations on many of these challenging areas until 2002, although there was a general commitment to admit new members in time for the next European Parliament elections. The aim is to ensure that some countries cannot hold up decisions on the big-money issues.

After grumblings from Stockholm, Union leaders agreed with the Swedes last week that the Commission's timetable should not prevent faster progress in negotiations if some applicants were able to wrap up talks more quickly than expected. Nevertheless, the strategy probably represents a more realistic assessment of what the Commission and EU governments will be ready to tackle in the first half of 2001.

Lindh will have enough on her plate next year as she strives to achieve a substantial breakthrough on what promises to be one of the most controversial questions of all: the free movement of people. Germany may be keen to try to establish the outlines of a deal next year involving delays before giving the candidate countries full rights in an attempt to sort out the issue before domestic elections in 2002. But as applicant countries push for their citizens to be given the right to seek work in existing Union member states from the start, no-one realistically believes that the matter will be settled in the next 12 months.

However, the Swedes should be able to make real progress in some of the other areas to be tackled, such as free movement of goods and services and company law.

By June, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic should have joined Cyprus and Slovenia in closing negotiations in more than half of all EU policy areas - although as the subjects to be dealt with become more difficult, this strictly numerical approach becomes less useful in assessing a candidate's progress.

For the Helsinki group of six countries which started negotiations this year, the aim is to try to catch up with the front-runners by starting talks on all areas during the Swedes' term of office. Malta has already made significant headway: for a few brief weeks during the French presidency, it was in the enviable position of having finished negotiations in as many areas as Poland.

The Swedes are eager to be seen as steadfast friends of the candidate countries, especially of Estonia and the other Baltic states, stressing that each applicant should be dealt with on its merits and not held back if other countries make slower progress. Lindh has stated that the Union should take in applicants as they pass the test for becoming members and not wait for laggards such as Poland to be ready.

But the Swedes are not naïve. They know that Germany will not allow enlargement to take place unless its eastern neighbour is part of the first group. The test of the Swedish presidency will be to see if Lindh's warnings that the Union is prepared to admit new members even if Warsaw is not ready has the desired effect of putting pressure on the Poles to sort themselves out.

Saint Göran slayed his dragon. Whether Lindh emerges victorious from her battles remains to be seen.

Article forms part of a survey on the Swedish EU Presidency.