European Union

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told European Union candidates that they should not get a worse deal than existing members when up to 10 countries join the bloc in 2004. Schroeder's words of reassurance, delivered in Poland, came after he dismayed candidate countries last weekend by saying that their farmers should not get hefty direct subsidy payments in the years after enlargement.

European Union rules on green energy are likely to boost wind power in Poland if the country joins the EU in 2004, industry officials said. "Poland is a future market, but not for three or four years," said Claus Roegild, the Eastern European sales manager of Danish wind turbine maker NEG Micon. Poland, which is heavily reliant on coal-fired power plants, aims to cover 7.5% of its energy sales with renewable energy by 2010 vs. 2% in 2001.

European Union foreign ministers sealed a compromise over whether candidate states should get billions of euros in farm aid, defusing a row that threatened to derail the bloc's eastward enlargement. A deal agreed after a day of often tense wrangling between France and Germany means negotiations with 12 aspirants on the sensitive issue of agriculture can begin this month, but a decision on direct payments to their farmers will be deferred until after Berlin's September general election.

Russia called for broader talks on the future status of its Kaliningrad enclave, which will be encircled by the European Union after the bloc's planned eastward enlargement. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, in Warsaw after meeting his Polish counterpart, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said Poland and Lithuania should take part in four-way talks aimed at ensuring that residents of the Baltic enclave can travel freely to mainland Russia.