The European Union yesterday passed another landmark in its membership negotiations with countries from eastern and central Europe but warned that enlargement could yet be derailed by Ireland's referendum on the Nice Treaty.
Mr Poul Christoffersen, Denmark's ambassador to the EU, announced that the Council of Ministers had completed a further round of negotiations with the leading 10 countries wishing to join the union. But he added: "There can be no doubt that if the Irish referendum would give a No, then we would enter into extremely complicated waters and it would be impossible for me to predict what could happen in that situation." Mr Christoffersen stressed again the tight timetable which requires that negotiations are completed at the EU summit in Copenhagen on December 12th.
But he refused to comment on whether there would be enough time to salvage the enlargement negotiations if Ireland's referendum was not held until the end of October and then delivered a No vote.
Earlier this week the European Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, was forced to issue a denial of reports that the Commission had discussed delaying enlargement. Commission officials said that the commissioners had last week discussed "the likely sequencing of events in 2004", notably how to dovetail enlargement with elections to the European Parliament and the results from the Convention on the Future of Europe.
The European Commission's director-general for enlargement, Mr Eneko Landaburu, yesterday emphasised the obstacles that still had to be overcome to keep enlargement on track, listing the Irish referendum among them.
Negotiations with the candidate countries over agricultural policy and over financial and budgetary arrangements are the most problematic and will be kept to last, not least because the EU's stance could be affected by Germany's general election in September. The EU is to finalise its negotiating positions on these dossiers at a special summit of heads of government in Brussels on October 24th-25th.
Before then, the Danish presidency wants to complete negotiations on all other subject areas with the 10 leading applicant countries.
The most significant achievement announced yesterday was an agreement with Poland on policing its 1,200 km of borders with Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
When Poland joins the EU, these will become the external borders of the EU.
Existing EU members have been reluctant to open their internal borders with Poland if the security of Poland's external border is not improved. Poland yesterday promised to introduce a visa requirement for the citizens of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus as of July 1st, 2003. It also promised steps to improve the working of the Polish police, prosecutor's offices and judiciary and to combat organised crime, corruption, money laundering, trafficking in human beings and drug-smuggling.
The Polish government has submitted a timetable for building new watch-towers on its border control points, to increase the number of border control officers and to replace army conscripts with professional border guards by 2006. The agreement also stipulates the degree of policing and the level of funding.
These commitments allowed the EU to close the chapter on justice and home affairs with Poland. The negotiations are divided up into a total of 30 chapters, or subject areas, with each candidate country.