” “The hopes and fears of the Churches

In view of the European Council in Copenhagen that will sanction EU enlargement from 15 to 25 countries, we have gathered the comments of the episcopal conferences of the ten new members, which we will publish beginning with the present number. Below we provide a résumé of the next stages that will lead to the official signature of the treaties and of the entry of the ten new countries into the Union. The Copenhagen summit. On 12 and 13 December, the Summit of the heads of state and of government of the European Union in Copenhagen will – save for last-minute hitches – formally sanction the conclusion of the membership negotiations with ten of the twelve candidate countries: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. So far none of the ten has concluded all thirty of the chapters negotiated with the EU. The issues of agriculture and financial forecasts and budgets still remain open: the questions relating to competition continue to represent an obstacle for Poland and Hungary; the Czech Republic has not yet accepted the terms of the agreement on the transport package; and the institutions chapter still remains open for Latvia, Czech Republic and Hungary. The two remaining candidate countries, Bulgaria and Romania, have respectively concluded fifteen and twenty-two chapters (Romania having begun negotiations only on twenty-six of the thirty). The next stages. Once the European Council is over, the signature of the membership Treaties is scheduled to be held in Athens on 16 April 2003. This date will be followed by the national referendums of the new members to seek their citizens’ approval of the membership treaty (Hungary has already fixed the date for its referendum on 12 April 2003, while the Czech Republic and Slovakia have proposed June 2003). It will then be up to the national Parliaments of the Fifteen and the European Parliament to ratify the new memberships. Lastly, the Council of general affairs on 18 November 2002 agreed on the date of 1st May 2004 as the official date when candidate countries will join the EU, in time for them to participate in the election for the renewal of the European Parliament scheduled for June of the same year. The costs of enlargement. Scaling down the requests of the candidates in conformity with the financial forecasts, the European Council in Brussels last October decided to contain expenditures for enlargement (2004-2007) within a ceiling of 42.5 billion euros, compared with net contributions by the ten candidate countries amounting to 15.5 billion euros for the same period. On 13/11, the Commission presented a document confirming its intention to proceed to the membership of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and indicating the procedures that these two countries should follow in terms of adjusting their administrative and judicial systems to the application of EU membership rules and making the necessary economic reforms. The case of Turkey. The new government of Ankara hopes that the European Council in Copenhagen may fix a date for the beginning of Turkey’s membership negotiations. The date of the start of negotiations is considered a necessary condition for accepting the basis proposed by the United Nations for the solution of the Cyprus question. On the contrary, the European Union, which hopes for the membership of a reunified Cyprus but which is also ready to accept the southern part of the island alone, does not consider it appropriate to link the two questions. If agreement fails to be reached in Copenhagen on the start of negotiations with Turkey, it will then be up to the Greek presidency (January – June 2003) to fix a date.