EU candidates discuss final obstacle

Ten candidate nations to join the European Union today sat down with EU negotiators seeking to overcome the final obstacle of more financial aid.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country holds the EU presidency, opened special talks with the would-be entrants ahead of Thursday’s summit meeting to wrap up four years of negotiations.

Diplomats say six of the 10 are on the point of accepting a €39bn aid offer over three years, but Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Malta, are holding out for better terms.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has cautioned all the candidates that there will be no more money and they risk years of delay in joining if they fail to strike a deal this week.

The eastern European nations are angry that their farmers will not get as much aid as their richer western neighbours until 2013. They also want bigger farm production quotas and more regional aid in general.

Denmark on Friday sweetened the offer by an extra €296m, bringing to just over a €1.5bn the total it has put on the table. That has annoyed Germany, France and the Netherlands, who say the Danes are being too generous.

EU foreign ministers are also supposed to address the touchy issue of giving Turkey a date to start its own membership talks.

Turkey’s new government has lobbied the EU hard in the past few weeks to secure support for its bid to open negotiations, but has criticised as too late the provisional starting date of 2005 proposed by France and Germany.

EU negotiators had wanted entry talks with the 10 to be finalised before the two-day EU summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, but negotiations will likely go down to the wire there.

The summit is supposed to issue invitations to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Malta and Cyprus to join in 2004, ending most of Europe’s Cold War divisions.