EU opens accession talks with front-runner states

The EU yesterday took the first formal steps in an enlargement process unlike any other so far with the opening of formal negotiations on accession with the six front-runner countries of central and eastern Europe.

Foreign ministers from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus sat down with their counterparts from the 15 EU member-states to open a detailed process that will last several years.

More specific talk of when they will actually accede is premature, diplomats say, while hinting that it will not be the early date of 2003 hoped for by the applicant countries.

To counteract such whispering campaigns many of the leaders are touring EU capitals to copper-fasten political support for rapid accession.

Next week the Polish Prime Minister, Mr Jerzy Buzek, will be in Dublin and, speaking to The Irish Times in Warsaw recently, he was insistent that his fast-growing country would be ready.

"We're convinced that by the end of 2002, if we sustain the current rate of reform, it will be possible to join then. To talk of later dates," he argued, "would be to undermine the dynamic of change and the social and political will needed to sustain it."

The process, which involves the adoption by the applicants of some 80,000 pages of EU legislation and administrative practice, the acquis communautaire, and the fundamental restructuring of both economies and national administrations, is also complicated by external factors.

Not the least among these is the threat by Greece to block the whole process if Cyprus accession is held up because of the division of the island and an unwillingness on the part of many to bring its political difficulties into the union.

France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands have made it clear they will block any attempt to integrate Cyprus without a political settlement and have questioned whether the negotiations should proceed without the involvement of representatives from the Turkish-Cypriot north of the island.

The Cypriot Foreign Minister, Mr Yannakis Cassoulides, reiterated yesterday that the internationally recognised government of Cyprus wanted to see the Turkish Cypriots join the negotiating team, but insisted that their absence should not stop the negotiations or, ultimately, be used as a pretext to block the accession of Cyprus to the EU.

"Turkey must not have a veto over our accession," he said.

"It would be dishonest to pretend that problems do not exist," the Austrian Foreign Minister, Mr Wolfgang Schussel, acknowledged.

There are also suspicions that some member-states, most notably France, are distinctly lukewarm about the process.

Paris has been warning about the pace of internal EU institutional reform, and there are particular fears about the effect of the huge Polish farming sector on the Common Agricultural Policy.

Five other eastern European countries - Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria - and Malta are also waiting in the wings, having been put on a slower train to membership.

The first round of negotiations will cover seven policy areas where the candidates expect little difficulty in adapting to EU requirements.

In some areas, like education and research, no problems have been identified that need negotiating. Talks on more controversial sectors such as agriculture will start later.