Bid to launch accession talks simultaneously

Date: 11/04/1996

By Thomas Klau

THE European Parliament looks set to fuel the controversy over how best to organise the next round of EU enlargement by calling for a simultaneous launch of all accession negotiations six months after the end of the Intergovernmental Conference.

This is one of the key demands made in the first comprehensive report on the planned expansion of the Union drawn up for MEPs.

While formally focusing on the European Commission's White Paper on the accession candidates' preparation for the single market, the report, which will be voted on during the Parliament's plenary session next week, amounts to a wide-ranging evaluation of the whole enlargement process.

It is likely to be seized on by those member states which would prefer all accession talks to begin simultaneously, even if such a move were to be largely symbolic in some cases.

But it will dismay others who have indicated their reluctance to start accession talks in 1998 with countries, such as Bulgaria or Rumania, whose EU membership will still seem a distant prospect at the end of the decade.

Other proposals in the report, including the abolition of individual member states' right to veto a new member's accession single-handedly, are also likely to prove controversial.