It just might be too soon to pop the champagne corks

Poland's ambassador to the European Union has a spring in his step, with reason. After all, the country has just received a positive report card on its EU membership application. Apart, that is, from a few quibbles from those Brussels bureaucrats about corruption, the judicial system and the minor matter of implementing all of the EU's 80,000 pages of treaty law in time.
So last Friday afternoon Ambassador Marek Grela found time for tea and biscuits with President Albert Bore, who runs the EU's Committee of the Regions. The ambassador was seeking advice on how to make sure that Poland's many regional voices are heard in the coming rush for a share of the EU's largesse.
Any EU ambassador who takes time out for the Committee of the Regions either doesn't yet understand where the power lies in Brussels, or is so confident of his position with the major institutions that he has plenty of time to patronise the minnows in the EU pool.
Never mind the caveats in the European Commission's school report on Poland's readiness for membership. Never mind the warnings issued by Romano Prodi, that other, rather more powerful president, of the European Commission, that the applicant countries must tackle the "shameful phenomena" of illegal trafficking in human beings.
Never mind, even, the disturbing suggestions that none of the ten poised to join have yet invested sufficiently in manpower and facilities to cope with the weight of euro-bureaucracy that is soon to overwhelm them.
For Grela and his fellow Brussels-based representatives of the applicant countries, the die is cast, and the game is as good as won.
But even those who support wholeheartedly the enlargement project have had their quiet reservations confirmed by the negative aspects of the Commission's dossier.
And splits are emerging in Brussels political circles - moderates fighting moderates over whether the time is right.
Officially, Britain's Labour Euro-MPs fully support the enlargement agenda.
But Labour stalwart David Bowe is embarrassing his political leader in the European Parliament by loudly warning that the whole project must be delayed by at least two years.
Why? Because the rural development agency in his own constituency, Yorkshire and Humberside, has just produced a devastating report warning that traditional industries in the region - particularly those labour-intensive areas such as textiles - will be hard hit when the floodgates of free trade are fully open.
"As Romano Prodi delivered his close-to-the-end-of-term report at Commission headquarters last Wednesday, Bowe was down the road at the European Parliament warning matter-of-factly that the contents of the Development Agency's report, and the caution voiced in the Commission's analysis, warrant delay.
"It is not a question of if the newcomers join but when," he said. "All I am saying is that we are clearly not ready and it is better to put things on hold and get the thing right."
Nonsense, said his political boss Gary Titley: "With governments across Europe struggling under financial constraints and the demands of the far right, there are those who say we should postpone.
"But the message from the candidates who have been waiting since the fall of the Berlin Wall is clear - they cannot afford to wait any longer."
Titley believes that any delay will give opponents of enlargement - the real die-hard opponents whose objections are more than just practical and financial - a real foothold for their arguments.
"There are elements, particularly in Germany and France, who would use a delay to force a major postponement and throw the whole thing off track," he said. "That cannot be allowed to happen. We must not lose our nerve."
Which raises the question in some minds as to why the EU's enlargement should be a matter for "nerve" at all.
Another voice, just as moderate as Bowe's, is beginning to issue warnings, too: Graham Watson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament, said the enlargement "marathon" is destined for a "sprint finish". And once the newcomers are formally endorsed by EU leaders at their Copenhagen summit in December "they will have little time to celebrate, as training for the next marathon, of meeting the acquis communautaire and achieving democratic endorsement of enlargement, begins".
"By being open about the outstanding problems and the measures taken to tackle them, we will be better able to reassure the doubters," he said.
Now some are saying that the doubts should have been dispelled before the process got this far. It is too late now, they say, to convince many that enlargement has real gains to offer.
Titley is more pragmatic: "You can always find a reason not to do something. Let's get on with it and solve problems as we go."
A sentiment no doubt applauded by Poland's man in Brussels as he steps up his diary engagements with those who count - and those who wish they did - on the Brussels political scene.