Enlargement talks get down to business

Date: 26/03/1998

By Mark Turner

THE start of accession negotiations with central and eastern Europe next week will be a decidedly low-key affair compared with the fanfare due to surround the launch of the single currency a month later.

EU foreign ministers will hold six inaugural intergovernmental conferences with the top candidates for Union membership next Tuesday (31 March).

The proceedings will be largely uncontroversial, except for the lack of northern Cypriot participants.

The occasion will nevertheless underline the clear split between first- and second-wave Union candidates. The top six applicants (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus) will move almost immediately into fast-track talks, while the five less advanced countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria) begin a considerably slower 'screening' process.

Furthermore, many EU officials believe the current dividing line between the two groups is unlikely to change when the European Commission carries out its first review of the applicant states later this year. "It is obviously too early to make any firm predictions, but we see little evidence to make us change our opinions," said one Commission insider.

The negotiations will begin next Friday (3 April), when representatives from all 11 countries will be briefed by Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek.

After that, the fast-track group will move into the arms of the Commission's newly constituted enlargement task force, while those lagging behind come under the wing of the Directorate-General for external relations (DGIA).

The first six are likely to enter individual bilateral talks fairly quickly, as negotiators start grappling with tricky issues such as environmental standards, the internal market and labour movement.

The second group will stay together for far longer. Despite hopes among some second-wave diplomats that they will be dealt with individually after the summer, Commission insiders are sceptical.

"I see little point in proceeding to bilateral talks with them too early as these countries are unlikely to move into the first wave for a while and, by then, the EU acquis and their own legislation will have changed substantially," said one official.

The Union also hopes to finalise pre-accession partnerships with each candidate by the end of this month, although few of them have gone as far with their national programmes to reach EU standards as the Commission would have liked.

"I doubt many will be ready for approval by the end of the month," said one official, although he conceded: "They have all been working very hard on this and it is impressive that they have made as much progress as they have."

A question mark remains, however, over Cyprus, with one-third of the island's population unrepresented because of the Turkish Cypriots' refusal to join a single delegation with their Greek counterparts.