EU candidates look to clear path in Friday talks
Date: 26-Oct-01
Country: CZECH REPUBLIC
Author: Alan Crosby
Nine of the 12 mostly ex-communist candidates will troop to EU headquarters to look at a backlog of topics ranging from transport to financial controls which need to be agreed before they can fulfil their ambition of joining the Union in 2004.
Hungary, Lithuania and Cyprus have no talks planned on Friday when the most notable successes are likely to be Latvia's winning protection for an important fishing ground and Poland ending talks on the environment after earning key concessions.
Issues contentious for some such as energy and bans on labour movement are on the back burner until at least the next negotiating sessions in November or December. Progess on them will be dictated by political deals, not technical criteria.
The candidates want to capitalise on fresh support for enlargement from the 15 nation bloc after the September 11 attacks in the United States sparked a renewed committment to the notion of peace and security within a united Europe.
"It will not be easy. We have some very complicated chapters ahead of us, but I am convinced that we will manage them," Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan told Reuters.
The Czechs have closed 19 of the 30 accession chapters (negotiating points) and are hoping to conclude talks on financial controls and on limits to worker mobility to keep themselves among the leading EU hopefuls.
Poland, the largest candidate, lags with only 17 chapters closed, although its new leftist government has promised a concerted drive to conclude talks as scheduled by end-2002.
NUCLEAR ROW LOOMS
But good Czech progress could slow as focus grows on one item kept off Friday's agenda, a brewing row with neighbouring Austria over the new Temelin nuclear plant, which Vienna wants shut down on safety grounds before Prague joins the EU.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party, in coalition with Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's conservatives, is adamantly opposed to Temelin, which is preparing to go on-line.
"We will not yield on this," former party leader Joerg Haider, who still dominates the populist grouping and sits on the policy-making coalition committee, told Reuters last month.
Haider said Schuessel would face difficulties within his own party if he did not exercise a veto over Temelin as many powerful provincial leaders oppose the plant.
"I don't think it's unrealistic to close the energy chapter this year," said chief Czech EU negotiator Pavel Telicka. "We hope, but we are not taking it for granted," he added.
POLISH PROGRESS
Poland will be happy on Friday to close the environmental protection chapter, after winning agreement to stagger the huge cost of modernising sewage and water plants and cleaning up smokestack industries, toxic waste dumps and rivers.
The chapter has been one of the most difficult to tackle for east Europeans, who are burdened with a 40-year legacy of environmental neglect under communism.
With memories fresh of suicide attacks in the United States there is little chance of closing chapters on home affairs, given continued concern over lax policing and weak controls on what will become the Union's external eastern border.
The EU is expected to criticise border controls in reports next month on progress to membership. It wants assurances from frontlines states such as Poland which borders Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, that security will be tight.
"The EU side has to have confidence that the Polish borders will be secure, that we will increase the number of our frontier guards or improve technology standards at custom posts," said Ewa Haczyk, spokeswoman for Poland's EU entry negotiating team.
Mindful of the burden membership is placing on ordinary east Europeans the EU this week relaxed its demands for extra taxes on tobacco, which would have upped prices and euro-scepticism.
"The EU would not gain in popularity if cigarettes became twice as expensive as today. They would also have created a very strong black market