France and Germany Clinch Landmark Deal to Enlarge E.U.
By REUTERS
URL:http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-eu-summit.html
Filed at 2:57 p.m. ET
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France and Germany reached a landmark agreement on Thursday to curb European Union farm spending from 2007, unlocking the final phase of negotiations to enlarge the 15-nation bloc.
The deal, clinched just before the start of an EU summit, should open the way for the European Union to conclude accession talks with 10 mainly east European candidate countries in December so they can join in 2004.
It was the second breakthrough in a week for the ambitious enlargement project, meant to heal Europe's Cold War scars, after Ireland voted in a referendum last Saturday to approve the Nice Treaty adapting EU institutions for an enlarged Union.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac announced the farm deal after private talks in a Brussels hotel.
``We will both take the position that phasing in (of direct farm aid) to acceding countries will start in 2004. From 2007, spending will be capped and will not increase beyond the rate of inflation up to 2013,'' Schroeder told reporters.
Chirac confirmed the agreement and said it meant agriculture spending, which accounts for about half the $92 billion EU budget, would be frozen from 2007 at its 2006 level.
``It is our joint will to control expenditure in all areas, not only on agriculture,'' the French leader said, adding limits should also apply to structural aid to poorer regions and, in his view, to Britain's annual EU budget rebate.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, hailed the Franco-German accord, which should help him broker a summit agreement on financial terms to offer the candidates.
``I feel confident that at the end of the day all EU leaders will realize that we are facing a historic moment, we're going to make a historic decision, and this should not be overshadowed by a detailed discussion on budget and agriculture,'' he said.
``PERFECT LANDING''
EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen spoke of his great relief at the deal, saying it cleared the way for a ``perfect landing'' for enlargement at a Copenhagen EU summit in mid-December.
``We are relieved. The French-German deal is a step in the right direction,'' a Polish diplomat said after the summit. ``We hope that the EU will now adopt its position on financial issues so that our negotiations can proceed.''
Net contributors to the EU budget, such as Germany, are worried at the long-term cost of admitting the mostly ex-communist applicants, including poor agrarian countries.
The states hoping to join in 2004 are Poland, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia.
France and other beneficiaries said it was too soon to discuss reforming EU farm policy because the budget, which runs until 2006, could accommodate the costs of enlargement.
The deal was a compromise in which Chirac won a respite until 2007, the end of his second term, but accepted that aid to French farms would slowly decline thereafter as payments to farmers in new member states were phased in.
Schroeder can claim he has saved German taxpayers billions from 2007, but has conceded that farm spending will remain high for another decade and that direct farm payments which Germany, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands want to scrap will survive.
The Commission has proposed giving farmers in candidate countries initially 25 percent of the direct payments received by existing member states and increasing the level incrementally to 100 percent over a decade.
``NO COST EXPLOSION''
European Commission President Romano Prodi stressed that enlargement funding would stay well within the budgetary framework agreed by EU leaders in Berlin in 1999. ``There will be no cost explosion,'' he told a news conference.
Seeking to deflect the pressure on Paris over agricultural policy reform, Chirac said Britain's annual budget rebate, won by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984, ``is less justified today than it was previously.''
Prodi backed Britain's refusal to discuss the rebate, saying it should not be linked to enlargement, and Rasmussen warned that putting the issue on the table would complicate matters.
Another threat to the enlargement timetable receded on Thursday when the Dutch parliament approved government plans to back enlargement, despite continued fears over costs and the candidates' readiness, and voted down calls for a referendum. |
