Luxembourg, 17/06/2003 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, Romania and Bulgaria restated their appeal to the Fifteen that they should formally pledge, at the Thessaloniki Summit, to do everything possible to conclude accession negotiations in 2004 (before the Prodi Commission's mandate expires on 31 October 2004) so that they may be welcomed into the EU on 1 January 2007. Our aim is to conclude negotiations in 2004, said Bulgarian foreign Minister Solomon Passy after a ministerial negotiating meeting in Luxembourg. He went on to say that they find this a "realistic" date that will allow membership in 2007. On this point, Bulgaria and Romania can count on receiving support from the Greek Presidency and probably from other Member States also. Council President George Papandreou said they support the 2004 target and their draft text of conclusions for Thessaloniki (adopted on Monday evening by the General Affairs Council) takes this largely into account. The dates 2004 and 2007 will no doubt be key dates for finalising enlargement, Council President George Papandreou said. The draft conclusions to be forwarded to the Heads of State and Government will in fact stipulate that the aim is to take Bulgaria and Romania in as members in 2007. He went on to add that, to this end, the rate of negotiations will be maintained, and these negotiations will be continued on the same basis and the same principles as applied to the ten acceding countries, judging each candidate on its own merits. On the basis of significant progress made so far, the Union supports Bulgaria and Romania in their efforts to achieve the goal of concluding membership talks in 2004, and it invites these two countries to step up their preparations on the ground.
The Bulgarian and Romanian delegations also insisted on Tuesday on the fact that negotiations on the financial chapters (agriculture, budget, regional policy) should be detached from talks on the next EU financial perspectives (2007-2013), given that the latter will no doubt not be finalised before 2006 - which would obviously make it impossible to keep to the 2007 deadline for the next enlargement. The European Commission seems to support the idea whereby agricultural, regional and budgetary negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania may be conducted and temporarily completed without the new financial perspectives being agreed, but on the basis of the same principles and mechanisms adopted at the end of last year in talks with the ten other candidate countries (in compliance with the principle whereby these two countries will be treated on the basis of the same principles and "rules of the game" as the other candidates). Furthermore, Director General for Enlargement at the Commission Eneko Landaburu announced in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the Commission was to present a "few ideas" in the autumn (at the time when the next regular reports are published on 5 November) on how this problem can be resolved. The Commission will then also present a new, detailed road map for concluding negotiations with the two countries. Mr Lanadaburu said: "We wish to prevent talks with Bulgaria and Romania being mixed up with this gigantic exercise of approving financial perspectives". At this stage, it is still difficult to know exactly how the Fifteen will respond to this problem, but the draft text for the Thessaloniki Summit stresses that the future reforms of Community policies or negotiations on the next financial perspectives should "neither impede the pursuit and conclusion of accession negotiations nor be prejudged by the outcome of these negotiations".
During Tuesday's ministerial session, Bulgaria confirmed the conclusion of the transport chapter (it has now provisionally closed 24 chapters out of 31). It is possible that the "environment" chapter will also be concluded over coming weeks, possibly even before the end of the Greek Presidency. Romania, on the other hand, has made official the end of negotiations on the chapters relating to the free movement of goods, taxation, free movement of capital, and audiovisual/culture policy. To date, Romania has provisionally closed 19 chapters.