Luxembourg, 10/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - The President of the EU Council, Anna Lindh, reaffirmed on Monday in Luxembourg the firm desire of the Swedish Presidency to achieve political breakthroughs in the sensitive areas of membership negotiations so that the European Council at Gothenburg on June 15 and 16 can clarify the probable timetable for the completion of negotiations and a possible date of entry for applicant countries.
Our aim is to achieve the greatest possible progress prior to the Gothenburg Summit and to obtain political breakthroughs on the really difficult subjects, Mrs. Lindh affirmed. Our intention is to set a more precise calendar in Gothenburg. The question is to know how precise it should be. That will depend on the progress that we make between now and the negotiations, she told the press on Monday in Luxembourg at the close of the General Affairs Council session. The climate in the members states is good and all expressed the desire to advance in keeping with the principles and the calendar set under the new enlargement strategy, she added.
In his declaration to the ministers, the Commissioner for enlargement, Günter Verheugen emphasized the enormous progress in negotiations since the Nice Summit. Since then a negotiation session of alternates was held at the end of March with all the applicant countries. Several applicants managed to finalize a number of questions. Our new strategy for enlargement is being applied as planned. So far, we have fully kept to the negotiation calendar that we set in the road map, the Commissioner said. Under the Swedish Presidency, a new quality was introduced in the negotiations, in the sense that in recent weeks, the first transitional periods were accorded to the applicant countries and the initial sensitive issues were discussed in depth. Some of the sensitive issues were even finalized with certain applicants, such the environment with Slovenia, which was given a transition period until 2015 in the area of treatment of city waste water, and the free movement of capital with Cyprus, where the problem of the sale of land and the acquisition of secondary homes to non-residents was raised. The finalization of the section on the free movement of goods with Lithuania and Slovakia, after only 4 months of negotiations, also came to a happy end, as did the complicated matter of company law with the Czech Republic and Hungary.
All these successes prove that our strategy is the right one, Mr. Verheugen underscored. Additional progress is expected in the forthcoming weeks. A second negotiation meeting with the alternates will be held on May 17 and 18, Mr. Verheugen said, adding that the Commission will submit on April 18 to the Council its draft common position on the free movement of people. Also in May, the Commission intends to submit to the member states a number of monitoring reports on how the applicant countries are advancing in the application of the acquis communautaires. Those reports will serve as working documents for the Gothenburg Summit, where the member states will assess the general state of enlargement