EU bartering goes down to wire

Foreign ministers are preparing ground for Copenhagen

EU foreign ministers are close to endorsing a financial package for the 10 countries expected to join the bloc in 2004, but Poland and Malta are still holding out for a better deal.

Nobody is banging the table, but everyone knows we are in the last stage now

Polish diplomat

The package, proposed by the EU's Danish presidency, has been criticised by Germany as too generous, and by some of the candidate states as insufficient.

By Tuesday, two days before the Copenhagen summit where the deal must be finally approved, Cyprus and Slovakia had agreed to the Danish terms, and diplomats said Hungary, Slovenia were also close.

But hardliners Poland and Malta got support on Tuesday from the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, who pointed out that the EU had originally budgeted to spend two billion euros more.

'Semi-final'

"I think that if we spend all the money... [it] will not be a bad deal," he said on Danish radio.

Mr Prodi was quickly contradicted by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who said bluntly: "There is no more money."

In other developments:

• The United Nations put forward a new proposal to re-unify Cyprus, hoping for outline agreement before the summit
• EU Foreign ministers were reported to be backing a Franco-German proposal to set membership talks with Turkey for 2005, after a review in 2004
• Turkish leaders continued to press for a "concrete" date for the talks to begin

As of Monday night the Danish Foreign Minister, Per Stig Moeller, remained confident that a deal accepted by all sides would be reached in time.

He said the EU had "passed the semi-final" and was now heading for the final in Copenhagen.

At the same time he criticised Poland for distracting negotiators from their top priorities by refusing to shorten its list of demands.

Poland under pressure

Correspondents say Poland is trying to squeeze an extra billion euro in farm subsidies and budget rebates from the EU.

"Nobody is banging the table, but everyone knows we are in the last stage now," a Polish diplomat told the AFP news agency.

In terms of money we have no room for manoeuvre. Definitely. Never ever

Joschka Fischer
German FM

The Polish Government is under pressure from voters to get the best possible terms, and may face difficulties winning a referendum on EU accession next year, if it is perceived to have failed.

Other candidate states are watching carefully to see what terms Poland succeeds in extracting from the EU.

BBC correspondent Oana Lungescu says the Czech Republic and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also have a few outstanding issues, such as agricultural production quotas, which they hope to solve soon.

Last-minute issues

Two issues will remain on the table until the very last minute at the Copenhagen summit.

One is the level of direct payments paid to farmers in the new member states.

EU governments have already agreed these should start at 25% of the level paid to existing member states, rising to 100% over 10 years - but a Danish proposal to allow new members to top up these payments to 40% from day one has yet to be finally agreed.

The other issue is the size of compensation payments to the new members to ensure that they are not worse off after they join, and start paying membership dues.

Denmark has proposed a one-off lump sum of one billion euros in 2004 to cover budgetary imbalances.