BRUSSELS: The European Union’s far-reaching enlargement next year is no done deal for the continent’s eurosceptics, who have girded for battle in a bid to sway voters in the 10 candidate countries.

Campaigners hostile to all the EU represents are making themselves heard as the members-in-waiting hold national referendums to decide whether they want to join the club in May 2004.

The anti-EU rallying cry is made loudly by the European Alliance of EU-critical Movements (TEAM), which denounces “the building of a centralized federal-style EU superstate”.

TEAM’s secretary general, Henrik Dahlsson, hints darkly that governments in the EU candidates do not want to allow “an open and balanced debate” on the merits of joining the 15-nation club.

Aware that eight of the 10 candidates are emerging from decades under the Soviet heel, the eurosceptics are hoping to cash in on fears that EU membership could crimp their newly regained sovereignty.

Hungary on Saturday was the latest to vote on whether to join the EU next year along with the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Voters in Malta and Slovenia have already delivered “yes” verdicts.

Jens-Peter Bonde, a tireless campaigner for the eurosceptic cause in the European Parliament, has travelled to Malta and Estonia in recent weeks with the message that the EU will become “in reality, a unitary state like France”.

In the candidate states, hostility to the EU runs deepest among nationalists, farmers and some small-business owners fearful of greater competition from their richer rivals.

But with most of the publics apparently in favour of membership, anti-EU groups will be hoping for low turnouts to maximize their share of the vote.—AFP