Brussels, 22/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Council of 24 and 25 October in Brussels "could be more important" for accession negotiations than that in Copenhagen on 12 and 13 December, journalists were told by Elmar Brok (CDU), Chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and general rapporteur for the Parliament on enlargement. The Parliament does not want any delays in the enlargement process, repeated Elmar Brok, for whom the exchange of views held by MEPs with the European Commission and the Council show that political decisions on the forthcoming accessions could be taken from October on (as long as negotiations proceed without major difficulties), so that the Copenhagen Summit will only have a few matters of detail to fine-tune. Thus, early next year, the Parliament would begin to examine its reports on the different candidate countries to give an opinion in March 2003 at the latest.
Furthermore, Elmar Brok confirmed that the opinion of legal experts on the Benes Decrees requested by the European Parliament should be completed during August (experts have still to be chosen). After the heated polemic surrounding this subject in recent days between the Czech Republic and Germany, Elmar Brok said he had every hope that, after "Whitsun, the Holy Spirit would descend" and that the atmosphere would be calmer. The EP Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted the Brok report, on Wednesday, on the state of accession talks and on country-by country reports. That by Jürgen Schröder (CDU) on the Czech Republic affirms, pending the opinion of experts, that the EP expects Prague to eliminate all discriminatory elements counter to acquis communautaire still contained in the Czech legislation (mainly in the Benes Decrees) by the time of accession at the latest.