Commission backs inviting all applicants to start talks

Date: 07/10/1999

By Simon Taylor

THE European Commission is set to recommend opening formal entry talks with all six remaining candidates for EU membership next week, despite doubts about whether some have made enough progress in preparing for accession.

According to diplomats, the Commission has decided to propose inviting every member of the second-wave group to the negotiating table because of the political pressure to reward applicants for their reform efforts and their contribution to the Kosovo campaign.

EU leaders have already made it clear that they are determined to launch the formal accession process with all the remaining candidates at their summit in Helsinki in December. "The Commission is very aware of the message that the heads of state and governments have issued," said one senior Union diplomat.

But Enlargement Commissioner G¨nter Verheugen will demand a high price in return, warning applicants that the negotiations can only be concluded when countries have brought their economies and legal systems fully into line with EU standards.

This approach, which will be outlined in the Commission's latest reports on the applicants' progress towards Union membership, will put an end to the current strategy of dividing the applicants into two groups. It will also mean that applicants will no longer be forced to conduct their negotiations on specific topics at the same time.

The new "differentiated" approach will allow candidates making rapid progress to leave the rest of the pack behind. This would mean that talks with countries such as Bulgaria and Romania could take between five and ten years, compared to the three years envisaged for stronger performers like Poland and Hungary.

This is designed to reassure the front-runners that their efforts will not be devalued by the decision to invite those lagging far behind to the negotiating table. "You risk a situation where the candidate countries which have bent over backwards to make reforms face difficulties if you give the impression that you have thrown away the objective criteria," said one diplomat.

Although the Commission is expected to recommend starting talks with Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Malta in the new year, it will not call for Turkey to be added to the list. Instead, in a bid to pacify Ankara for being excluded from the negotiating group, the Commission is expected to call for a more extensive strategy to help the country prepare for EU membership.

While falling short of the full pre-accession strategy set out for the other 12 candidates, this would go further than the European Strategy agreed at the 1997 Luxembourg summit and could involve laying down a priority list of reforms which Ankara must introduce, plus some type of 'screening' to assess Turkey's progress towards meeting the requirements for membership. But EU diplomats say even this limited offer depends on Ankara making a significant political gesture to the Union in the run-up to Helsinki.

While the Commission is prepared to bow to the political pressure for a start to formal talks with all the other applicants, it is determined to ensure that candidate countries are living up to reform commitments made during negotiations and plans to launch an intensive monitoring programme next year.

The decision to invite more countries to the negotiating table will send an invaluable political message to governments across central and eastern Europe, which need to be able to show the public that their painful reform efforts are reaping some rewards.

Slovakia and Lithuania have recently announced expensive and domestically unpopular plans to close nuclear installations in an attempt to address the concerns of anti-nuclear member states such as Austria, which has insisted that entry talks cannot start without such commitments.

The European Commission is set to recommend opening formal entry talks with all six remaining candidates for EU membership, despite doubts about whether some have made enough progress in preparing for accession.