Poland closes EU chapter on environment

Poland was expected to close negotiations with the European Union (EU) on environmental matters last Friday, wrapping up a difficult and potentially costly chapter of talks and moving forward the country's candidacy for membership in the economic and political bloc.

Poland's new government, led by Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) Prime Minister Leszek Miller, has pledged to make EU accession a priority. "I emphasize the determination of our government to complete the negotiation process in 2002, as that would enable our access to the EU in 2004," Miller said last week during a visit from Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who holds the rotating EU presidency.

The departed Solidarity Election Action (AWS) government laid the groundwork for closure of environment talks, refiguring the country's position in April by dropping requests for some of the original 14 transition periods and shortening several others.

Last week Poland settled on nine transition periods, citing new data, progress on implementing EU standards and changing circumstances since formulating original negotiation positions, said Ewa Haczyk, an official with the government's Department of Integration and Negotiations with the European Union. "It isn't any concession from our side," she said.

Estimates on the final cost for Poland to adopt the EU's environmental rules and regulations vary, with the former negotiation team foreseeing more than Ä30 billion through a 15-year period, and the Environment Ministry calculating zł. 74.5 billion-zł. 140.4 billion ($17.7 billion-$33.4 billion). Polish officials expect little EU financial assistance in this field. The longest transition, 10 years, allows Poland time to spread out costs and adapt control and supervision on waste transfer within the EU, Haczyk said. The most difficult issues for Poland will be waste management, sewage treatment plant construction, waste utilization and dumps, she said.

Miller and his newly appointed chief negotiator, Jan Truszczyński, would like Poland to catch up with other candidate countries and finalize negotiations next year. Poland has now closed 18 of the 30 negotiation "chapters" - though one has since been reopened for further talks - leaving it behind smaller frontrunner countries while the most difficult topics still have to be tackled.

EU officials are also hopeful that Poland can reinvigorate talks even amid a potentially more volatile domestic political scene following the introduction of euro-skeptics to Parliament with last month's elections.

In Warsaw last week, Verhofstadt sought to encourage Poland's new government. "Of all the 13 candidate countries, yours is one of the best placed to enter the European fold ... and live alongside the Germans, the Danes and the Dutch," he said during a speech at the College of Europe. "The Polish people have managed to revive their country after 120 years of German and Russian oppression. During the Cold War, the Poles stubbornly made it clearer than anyone else that they did not agree with an East-West divide. I do not see how a people that inherited such a past can fail to take its place in the European Union."

Miller also lobbied German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to rethink the country's stand on free movement of workers, a potential stumbling block in negotiations. Under German and Austrian pressure, the EU has officially set a span that could last seven years before candidate-country workers can freely access labor markets in today's member states.

The EU last week gave ground in one area - tobacco taxes. The European Commission (EC) proposed a two-year transition period for excise duties on cigarettes in Poland.

"There are well-founded concerns that not accepting transition periods may have a strong political, economical and social impact on candidate countries' societies and may result in negative repercussions on the whole process of enlargement," the EC said in a press release. The proposal will have to be approved by the member states before being negotiated with the candidates.

Jeff Sparshott