Politicians argue that is still time to plug the holes revealed by EC report

President Aleksander Kwaśniewski announced plans to call a meeting of the Cabinet Council on November 6 in order to analyze the report prepared by the European Commission, which evaluates the state of Poland's readiness to join the European Union. In reply to EU officials' complaints and concerns over the delays in adjusting to EU norms and directives, Polish politicians argue that the report does not take into account the size of the country and the fact that all the delays can still be made good before membership on May 1, 2004. Kwaśniewski emphasized that Poland is a large nation and therefore the scale of difficulty reflects this. "We should do everything in order to minimize the number of complaints concerning our country," he told a press conference. According to unofficial information this, the last report issued by the EU before the May enlargement, states that Poland is still behind in nine sectors, the worst result of all candidate countries to join the Union next year. (Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 1) A.K.