EU split over warnings to future member states

The European Commission is agonising over how harshly to criticise central European states due to join the European Union next May for failing to implement EU law when it issues final progress reports next week.

EU officials are concerned that entry preparations are far behind schedule, especially in Poland - by far the biggest of the 10 acceding countries - and this is the last chance for Brussels to use its leverage to shake things up.

"The reports will be highly critical, particularly of Poland, but the Commission is split over whether to send some countries specific warning letters," one EU source said.

The EU executive departments responsible for sensitive issues such as food safety, agriculture and the internal market are pressing for tougher warnings, he said.

"There is no doubt in reality that especially Poland lags behind, with an array of problems including veterinary health, food safety, border controls, reform of the civil service and the environment," the source said.

Some want the Commission to explicitly warn Warsaw it may have to trigger safeguard clauses to exclude Polish produce from the EU's internal market, or deny it access to regional or farm subsidies, because of hygiene and administrative shortcomings. But EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, whose office is in charge of writing the reports, firmly opposes such a warning, arguing it would be politically counter-productive.

"The other DGs (Directorates-General) say this is not going to work and it would be a disaster for the EU if nothing happens before May 1. But Verheugen says that for political reasons, we cannot do this to Poland," the source said.

A final decision will be taken on November 5, when the whole 20-member EU executive adopts and issues the progress reports.

The German commissioner, for whom the historic expansion of the bloc into former communist central Europe will be a crowning achievement, argues that sending a public warning to the weak government of Prime Minister Leszek Miller could exacerbate a nationalist anti-EU backlash in Poland, the source said.

Mr Verheugen's spokesman, Jean-Christophe Filori, said none of the shortcomings to be highlighted by the reports was so serious that it could not be fixed by the accession date of May 1, 2004.

"The key question in these reports will be: 'Can what remains to be done be achieved in time?' And the answer will be: 'Yes'," he told a news briefing on Monday.

Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz told Reuters he expected some criticism and realised it would be better if key agricultural inventory and food safety systems were already in place.

But he added: "We believe we will be ready in time." A senior Commission official said there were concerns about a number of the new member states' preparations in the area of justice and home affairs, which covers police cooperation, judicial systems, border controls, asylum and immigration.