Squabbles over money are set to dominate this evening's opening of a two-day European Union summit meeting in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, which will set the seal of the accession of 10 new member-states.
In a letter to EU leaders yesterday, the Danish prime minister, Mr Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said he was willing to extend the meeting into the weekend if necessary. The Danish government is believed to have booked Copenhagen's vast Bella conference centre for five days.
Mr Rasmussen said he was certain that EU leaders and their counterparts from the candidate countries would reach an agreement which would allow enlargement to proceed. However he warned that if any candidate countries made demands that could not be met, enlargement would proceed without them. "I envisage difficult negotiations but will stress that we will conclude with those ready and I will not guarantee that 10 new countries will be on board on Friday," he said.
Mr Rasmussen was almost certainly referring to Poland, which is holding out for a better financial deal. Poland wants the EU to make available to the new members the full €42.5 billion which was originally budgeted for enlargement back in 1999.
The EU's offer falls €2 billion short of that figure but the main EU net contributors, such as Germany, say they can no longer afford more because of an economic slowdown and severe pressure on their budgets.
Germany has been reprimanded by the European Commission for running a budget deficit in excess of the 3 per cent limit on eurozone countries.
The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. this evening with a 90-minute discussion with the president of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Over dinner, the leaders will discuss the negotiations on enlargement and will consider how to proceed with the EU's relationship with Turkey.
Turkey wants the summit to set a date for the start of its negotiations to join the EU but some member-states believe such a move to be premature. The leaders are expected to tell Bulgaria and Romania that they are likely to join the EU in 2007.
Substantive negotiations with the 10 other candidates will get under way tomorrow and Mr Rasmussen hopes a deal will be agreed by late afternoon. Tomorrow evening, the European Union leaders and their counterparts from the candidate countries will meet for dinner and a discussion under the heading "Our Common Future".
The former Polish foreign minister, Mr Bronislaw Geremek, urged both sides not to forget the importance of the decision they were taking at Copenhagen. "On both the EU and the candidate side, we've lost the historic dimension of this enlargement. We need to get a good agreement on finances but it should not be just a debate on technicalities and between accountants," he said.
However, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said in Brussels this week that the single outstanding disagreement between the EU and the candidates could be summed up in one word - money.