Brussels, 04/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - Wednesday's Coreper is in principle to approve the final version (in English) of the Accession Treaty, as most of last week's interpretation problems (see EUROPE of 1 February, p.7) were settled on Monday evening during informal talks that the Greek Presidency, supported by the European Commission, held with several of the ten candidate countries.
As far as Poland is concerned - the country that posed the largest number of problems - all divergence of a technical kind (mechanism for the payment of direct aid, Community subsidies to semi-subsistent farmers, etc.) were smoothed out at the negotiator level. The European Commission's spokesperson confirmed that "from our side, everything is settled". Although some of the technical aspects negotiated with candidates will be treated with the necessary "flexibility", the "final agreement of Copenhagen has not been amended", he stressed.
According to Polish diplomatic sources, there was a "fair chance" that solutions negotiated on Monday evening would also be approved by the Polish government, which was to debate the matter on Tuesday afternoon in Warsaw. The only political question still unresolved with Poland concerns the unilateral declaration that the Polish government seeks to annex to the Treaty to ensure that, once the country has joined the EU, the Polish anti-abortion law may not be amended by future Community legislation. This issue is still to be tackled on Wednesday at Coreper.