Brussels, 06/04/2000 (Agence Europe) - The EU and the six countries from the "Luxembourg group" (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus) held a new negotiation meeting on Thursday at deputy level, with the following results:
- Two new chapters of the Community acquis have been opened with all six candidates: "regional policy" and "financial control";
- The "common foreign and security policy" (CFSP) chapter was provisionally closed with all six (the closure of this chapter with all of them was delayed due to problems of formulating the common position of the EU and Cyprus, while no other significant problem exists for the five Central and Eastern European countries since the opening of negotiations on this chapter in 1998).
In addition, the negotiations on other chapters have been closed, though differently according to the state of readiness of each candidate, i.e.:
- Estonia closed the negotiations on three additional dossiers: rights of societies, fisheries and external relations. The total number of closed chapters with Estonia is no 12 (out of a total of 31). Furthermore, the negotiations continued on Thursday on the free movement of goods and social policy;
- Hungary on Thursday only closed the CFSP chapter, which brings the number of chapters provisionally closed to 10. The negotiations continued on the rights of societies, social policy and the free movement of goods;
- Poland closed the CFSP chapter (10 chapters in total are now closed) and the negotiations continue on Thursday over the free movement of goods, the rights of societies, competition policy and social policy;
- Czech Republic on the initiative of Hungary and Poland closed the CFSP chapter. The negotiations continued on the rights of societies and social policy.;
- Slovenia closed the chapter on the rights of societies (in addition to CFSP) increasing the total number to 11. This Thursday the negotiations continued on social policy and the customs union;
- Cyprus closed four chapters (CFSP, rights of societies, fisheries and social policy), which bring to 15 the number of closed dossiers.
