The twenty-five of Athens” “

A decade after the EU decision to open up to the countries of Eastern Europe, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary have now been confirmed as EU members, while awaiting their formal entry which will take place on 1st May next year. The ceremony of the signing of the membership Treaties took place in Athens on 16 April; it was attended by the heads of state and of government of the Twenty-Five, and the Presidents of the other three candidate countries, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. The Greek Presidency profited from the occasion to informally convene the European Council: its agenda included the customary exchange of views with the president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, a discussion with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the role of the UNO and the EU in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq, and a debate with the president of the Convention on the future of Europe Valery Giscard d’Estaing on the future institutional system of the enlarged Union. Giscard came to Athens with a 41-page document which defines the ‘status’ and functions of the future EU Foreign Minister. The proposal – abandoning the initial idea of the Presidium of the Convention for a “super Foreign Minister” – envisages that the Foreign Minister, as a new institutional role of the EU, would be endowed with the combined functions of the current High Representative for common foreign and security policy and Commissioner for external relations, plus some other functions now performed by the Commissioners for development and trade policy. The Minister would flank a president of the Council with a term of office of at least two and a half years, a president of the Commission elected by the European Parliament and a Commission composed by a representative of each member state. Fact file: Process of enlargement The commitment assumed by the signatories of the membership Treaties of the European Union consists in transferring into their own national legislations the so-called Community acquis, i.e. the sum of provisions contained in the Treaties in force that constitute the existing corpus of European law. That means they must assume rights and obligations already shouldered by the current Fifteen. For each of the new members a timetable – variable, depending on the sectors in question and ‘degree of preparation’ – is laid down, within which they must conform to EU legislation and adapt their own political, administrative and judicial institutions to the standards of the Union. The signing of the Treaties in Athens represents the culmination of a process that began several years ago, with the formalization of membership application, following the fall of the Berlin wall and the joining of NATO by some countries of the former Soviet bloc, and in conformity with the provisions of the European Council of Copenhagen of 1993 which defined the three general criteria for entry into the Community: political criteria (stability of institutions to guarantee democracy, rule of law, respect for human rights, protection of minorities); economic criteria (market economy, ability to compete on the European market); institutional criteria (effective transposition of the Community acquis in national legislation). Of the ten new members, the first to knock on the doors of the Union was Cyprus in 1990, the last was Malta in 1998 which reactivated the application it had already made in 1990 but later withdrew. Cyprus, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary began their membership negotiations with the Commission in 1998, followed two years later by Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Slovakia. As regards Turkey, in 2001 the European Council of Laeken defined the new partnership for membership, and changed Turkey’s status from a country eligible for candidature to a candidate country. Romania and Bulgaria ought to be ready to join the Union in 2007. Formal entry for the ten new EU members is scheduled to take place on 1st May 2004. In the meantime, they will enjoy ‘observer status’.