Radio Deutsche Welle

After the consequent round of the accession negotiations, which is the last one during the Belgian EU Presidency, most of the candidate-members have already opened almost all of the chapters of the negotiations and most of them have also finalized the negotiations on about 2/3 of the acquis. The front runners are Slovenia with 25 temporary closed chapters, followed by Cyprus and the Czech Republic with 24 of the total of 31 chapters. Poland is the last of the 10 most advanced countries with 19 temporary closed chapters. The two countries, which are lagging behind, are Bulgaria and Romania with 13 and 9temporary closed chapters respectively.

During the press conference after the end of this round of the negotiations at the level of foreign ministers, the Belgian Presidency represented by Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel expressed satisfaction with the pace of the accession negotiations and gave a high assessment for the progress of the EU candidate-members on their way to the accession. According to him, the Belgian Presidency implemented the program, which was provided in the road map of the negotiations, which was announced in Nice and was confirmed by the European Council in Gothenburg. This gave the opportunity to lagging behind countries to catch up or even leave behind some of the more advanced candidates. This concerns candidate-members like Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia.

Thus a large group of ten states is formed even more definitely. These states have set as a goal to complete the negotiations at the end of 2002 and they do have the chance to do it. The next reports on the progress in the preparations for membership, which are to be released in the second half of next year will determine which exactly these ten countries will be. As far as Bulgaria and Romania are concerned, both Louis Michel and the EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen share the opinion that they can catch up with the other candidates only by miracle. This is why a special strategy will be applied to them, which will help them approach the others.

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