Irish Times

The European Commission has rejected a French call to include Bulgaria and Romania in the first group of candidate countries to join the EU. And a Commission spokesman said it was not yet certain that EU enlargement would take the form of a 'big bang' with 10 countries joining at the same time.

A Commission progress report published last week said that 10 countries, not including Bulgaria and Romania, were on course to complete negotiations in time to join the EU in 2004.

But a Commission spokesman said yesterday that there was no guarantee that all 10 would succeed and that political considerations would not play a role in determining which countries would be the first to join.

'We are not talking about a big bang. We are saying that up to 10 countries are involved. We cannot be sure that as many as 10 will cross the finishing line at the same time,' he said.

The spokesman dismissed an assertion by the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, that it was unthinkable that Poland would not be among the first candidate countries to join the EU.

But he added that there was no reason to believe that Poland was lagging behind other countries in the accession negotiations.