June 23, 2002	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 11, 1423

SEVILLE: European Union leaders fly home on Saturday after their Spanish summit to start a potentially rocky six months’ haggling over the biggest and most ambitious expansion in the club’s history.

With an agreement on tougher immigration controls and streamlining unwieldy decision-making, their attention now turns to ensuring that 10 new members can join on schedule in 2004.

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Malta and Cyprus are already well-advanced in negotiations which will finally erase the continent’s cold war frontiers.

But difficult issues remain to be resolved — both among the 15 current members, and between them and the increasingly impatient applicants. The rapidly approaching endgame is likely to be tense and messy.

Seville’s final declaration will reaffirm the “determination” of the 15 to make enlargement work. Governments know, however, that the path to December’s Copenhagen summit — where the lucky 10 will be named — is strewn with obstacles.

“It’s vital to European credibility, and we have to stick to the timetable,” Britain’s Europe minister, Peter Hain, said last night. “We are entering the final six months and there is a great prize at the end of it.”

Foreign ministers cleared the decks last week with a hard- fought decision to shelve the knottiest item on the agenda: how to adapt the notoriously costly common agricultural policy to suit the new members, all of whom expect to be financial winners from the legendary farm subsidies which Brussels has been trying to control.

Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain do not want the subsidies — accounting for about half of the EU’s E95bn (US dollars 92bn) budget — to be automatically extended, given the huge agricultural sector in countries like Poland.

Domestic politics make swift progress unlikely. Elections in France have set back hopes of long overdue CAP reform, though President Jacques Chirac will have a freer hand after ending his awkward “cohabitation” with the left.

Nor can there be much movement until after the September general election in Germany, where the chancellor, Gerhard Schroder and Edmund Stoiber, the conservative challenger from Bavaria, are equally opposed to continuing to shell out 25 per cent of the EU budget on the CAP.

Denmark, which takes over the rotating presidency from Spain on July 1, insists that enlargement cannot be held hostage to narrow and short-term national interests.

Entry candidates fear that a tight timetable may force them to accept unfavourable entry terms on top of existing worries about shifting goalposts and unfair conditions. Efforts will now focus on making a deal at the next EU summit in Brussels in October. But the stakes are so high and the political investment so immense that problems are likely to be resolved.

“I think the difficulties can be overcome,” Mr Hain said.

“People always look at the difficulties and then marvel at the achievements. Europe has a habit of delivering on the big projects.” Seville went some way to meeting other challenges posed by enlargement by agreeing procedural changes that will allow the union’s creaky machinery to function more effectively.

Future summits are to be shorter and more focused. They will issue only short action-oriented “decisions” instead of rambling “conclusions” on an enormous range of European and global issues.

But leaders were divided over plans submitted by Tony Blair and Mr Schroder for a new forum to handle strategic issues and prepare summits better.

Mr Blair emerged from the Nice summit in December 2000 complaining that it was impossible to carry on with late night sessions of horse-trading, where deals were done behind closed doors.

Bigger decisions, such as whether to appoint a president of Europe for a five-year term, will have to wait for negotiations on a new EU treaty.

Small member states and the European commission rightly fear a grab for power by big member states, led by Britain, Spain and France.

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, will report to the summit today on the progress of his convention on the future of Europe — the unprecedented consultation exercise designed to work out how the structure will work when the EU expands.

The leaders, anxious to narrow the gap between disenchanted citizens and remote institutions, will also adopt plans for greater transparency.

Ministers will have to explain and vote in public instead of behind closed doors, though only when adopting laws on which they share decision-making power with the European parliament.

Britain has proposed that such sessions be televised. Ironically, however, sensitive issues such as immigration — the hottest item on the Seville agenda — would still be discussed in secret.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.