First ten new members to join on 1 May 2004 - Date accepted by candidates under certain conditions - Presidency prepares draft "final package"

Brussels, 18/11/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, the EU's foreign ministers decided on 1 May 2004 as the accession date for the ten new members officially determined at the Brussels Summit, namely Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus. Until Monday, the date always given for the greatest enlargement in the history of the EU was 1 January 2004, but the EU eventually opted for a slight delay (five months) to give national parliaments more time to ratify the Accession Treaties, explained President of the Council, Per Stig Moeller after the meeting. The slight delay will also make it possible to soften the financial positions of the new members so they can make lower budget contributions in 2004 but benefit from Community grants programmed for the whole of 2004. The 1 May 2004 date also has direct implications in terms of the current European Commission. The Danish Presidency explains that the Accession Treaty will stipulate that the Commission's term of office will end earlier than expected (most likely at the end of October 2004) to give way to a new Commission on which each of the new countries will be represented by a Commissioner.

The ten candidate countries, whose foreign ministers attended most of Monday's General Affairs Council meeting, broadly welcomed the new date, as long as three conditions are met, namely:

• The new Member States will not have to pay their monthly budget contributions to the EU until 1 May 2004. The candidates want the EU to set out as soon as possible how this change of date will influence budget calculations, particularly in terms of the net financial position of the different countries and the compensatory payments the net contributors can expect in the first three years. The draft "overall package" that the Danish Presidency has announced for the end of the week (or the beginning of next week) is expected to take account of the consequences of the change of date.
• Candidate countries have to be guaranteed "full" participation in the upcoming Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), along with voting rights. The Polish European Affairs Minister, Danuta Huebner, told reporters about a "growing rumour" that some Member States want the IGC to be held as soon as possible after the Convention (in which the candidates are participating as observers, without voting rights) at the end of 2003, before enlargement. She said that sidelining future Member States from the IGC would be unacceptable politically and would make it hard to ratify the Accession Treaties in candidate countries. Huebner said that only two options were on the cards for the accession countries: either holding an IGC straight after the end of the Convention, but with candidate countries being given equal voting rights to the current fifteen; or an IGC put off until the new members actually joined.
• The new date must not prevent the candidates from participating in the next European elections as full Member States.

Candidate countries set out their position ahead of the "final package"

Before discussing preparations for the Copenhagen Summit, the EU fifteen on Monday held a long debate with their counterparts from the ten candidate countries, where the latter set out their positions and echoed the ideas formulated last Friday at the ten candidate countries "summit" in Warsaw. In a common declaration, the 10 candidates emphasised the following: the final financial package should enable future Member States to maintain macroeconomic stability and a budget policy that will allow them to respect the Maastricht criteria in the near future; the net financial stability of the future new Member States should not only be better in 2004 than in 2003, but should also improve from 2004 to 2006; - the budgetary means for enlargement as fixed in Berlin in 1999 should be fully used, which is not yet the case according to the EU offer defined at the Brussels Summit; - since the future new members will not be able to benefit immediately from all Community spending at 100% (direct aid, regional aid), their budgetary contributions should be "phased in". An alternative could consist in "adequate" compensatory payments calculated on "sound and realistic" bases (which is not the case in the current EU offer, candidates say); - for direct aid to farmers, all candidates call for the transitional period to be reduced and for the departure level to be increased above the 25% offered by the EU for 2004.

Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Polish Foreign Minister, said when speaking to the press, that, today, all candidates said practically the same thing - that they want the Berlin budgetary framework to be respected both ways, and that all the Berlin budget must be used up. Regarding aid to farmers, he had the feeling that there is a certain margin for manoeuvre although it is limited on the EU side. The Danish Presidency announced it was going to prepare for the end of this week (or the beginning of next week) a proposal of compromise for a "final package" to be proposed to candidates. Mr Cimoszewicz said it is clear that, "if the Danish Presidency announces a new proposal of compromise it is to say something other than what is already in the Union's current offer". However, Commissioner Günter Verheugen was categorical: "The result of the European Council in Brussels cannot be negotiated".

Presidency sources pointed out during the afternoon debate that the Fifteen have all shown proof of understanding for candidates' budgetary concerns, but that the margin of manoeuvre is "very limited" and "does not exist at all as far as direct aid is concerned".

The Commission proposal for an updated roadmap and for additional pre-accession aid in favour of Bulgaria and Romania was largely approved by the Council. The case of Turkey was not discussed on Monday and will be discussed at the Council on 9 December.