Poland optimistic as Brussels takes presidency
By : Jeffrey Sparshott
Polish and European Union (EU) officials remain optimistic regarding the country's advancement in accession negotiations and hope to make measurable progress this week during the last formal round of talks scheduled before September's elections, according to both sides.
The July 27 meeting among chief negotiators is the first during the Belgian EU presidency and will be the last until late October, according to the current EU schedule. Originally a second set of talks was not planned until even later in the year, though Poland requested an additional meeting in the hope that it would enable the country to move forward, a Polish official said last week.
Compared with other candidate countries and following a negotiation timetable established by the EU, Poland is behind in talks to join the union. But officials dismiss the apparent lack of progress in Poland's efforts to join the political and economic bloc as misleading.
"The number of closed chapters don't give any indication on the real state of preparedness on the ground of a candidate country," said Jean-Christophe Filori, the EU's spokesman for enlargement issues. "To take extreme examples, you may well have 25 chapters closed but a huge amount of weaknesses and deficiencies in the implementation of the EU legislation in the six remaining chapters. You may also have 15 chapters closed only, but minor difficulties in all remaining chapters."
The EU terms each negotiating area as a chapter; there are 30 issue areas and an additional chapter that will lump together unresolved issues set aside until the last minute. Poland has solved 16 while smaller countries have sped past.
"A chapter like 'company law' for instance remains open (for Poland) because of a single issue on patent protection in pharmaceuticals which requires a political decision to allow for closure," Filori said last week. "The same goes for free movement of persons everything is settled except the delicate question of free movement of labor. But all the efforts required to implement the remaining EU legislation in those two chapters are made in Poland. In short, Poland's preparation is not in question, it is at the same level of the so-called frontrunners in negotiations."
Leszek Jesien, an adviser to Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, said that Poland is making progress on several fronts and noted that the two sides are quite optimistic about closing the energy chapter which covers oil, natural gas and coal sectors Friday.
"That's certainly something we hope to happen," Jesien said last week. "I think the chances are pretty low for any other measurable progress for the next week. There are few things we did on other chapters that are under consideration."
He said that the country's situation is more complicated and difficult for Poland and the EU than with other smaller countries. Simply analyzing the Polish negotiating positions takes the EU longer than it would with other nations with smaller economies and populations.
Poland is the largest of the candidate countries in a relatively advanced state of negotiations it has a larger population than all other EU aspirants together with a serious chance of joining in the first enlargement wave, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis.
Observers say that it will be difficult for Poland to make any meaningful concessions in its negotiation positions prior to September's parliamentary elections. Free movement of labor, where the EU wants to restrict Polish workers for up to seven years, real estate purchase by foreigners, where Poland wants to keep foreigners from buying agricultural land for up to 18 years, regional development funds, agricultural subsidies, and Poland's Special Economic Zone (SSE) tax aid remain major sticking points.
In a decision this month that bodes ill for SSE's, the European Commission ruled against some tax-aid schemes designed to promote investment in Spain saying that the state should "discontinue them, suspend payment of any outstanding aid as yet unpaid and take all necessary measures to recover the aid already granted."
If the EU were to impose similar harsh measures on Poland, hundreds of businesses would be affected and an undetermined amount of money would have to be recovered.
Jesien noted that no candidate country has closed the chapter on competition policy, which governs SSE's and their ilk, and that the EU might have to bend its strict competition policy.
"The negotiations on SSE's are quite difficult and I think the position or the situation of this region coming freshly out of a transition period is a little different from other countries," he said. "There is no country which closed the chapter on competition policy. It is a clear sign that the EU will have to work on a common approach to the problem."
Competition policy and energy are areas scheduled to be closed during Belgium's six-month term at the EU's helm, according to the EU's roadmap for negotiations.
