Brussels, 12/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - In the next few days the Commission will send the Council its second interim monitoring report on the ten accession countries. A spokesperson said on Monday that it was too early to speculate about the contents of the report since work was still continuing on it, but the report will apparently note that a large number of the ten accession countries have serious problems meeting Community legislation in several areas, particularly food safety and managing EU funds. Information we have received from the candidate countries shows that not much progress has been made since the first monitoring report (March 2003) that warned nine of the future Member States (with the exception of Slovenia) about delays in implementing EU legislation, explained Commission Director General Eneko Landaburu in an interview with this newsletter. Since the end of February there has been no spectacular progress, he said, but warned against "hasty conclusions" that might lead people to prejudge the state of preparation of the candidates before the Commission publishes its final monitoring report (5 November). What's important for me, he went on, is the final result, in other words, what is written in the final report. The spokesperson also said that in parallel with the monitoring by DG Enlargement, Commissioner David Byrne had written to the Polish government requesting that it speed up preparations for meeting EU health and phytosanitary standards, particularly for abattoirs and dairies.