Six weeks - or miss the train

Just in case any of the applicants for EU membership need a reminder, the European Commission has issued a little note on how to barter for a better deal in these last few weeks of wrangling.
It states: "During the negotiations, it is part of the game to exaggerate the justices of one's own position, and the unreasonableness of the others.
"But don't forget: at the end of the negotiations you have to explain why the unreasonableness has all of a sudden become not only reasonable, but a victory for you."
This helpful guide, which should now be placed in some EU handbook of tactical politics, actually formed part of an address by EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler to the farm ministers of all 10 applicant states.
It was a tip that was gratefully received and will be dutifully deployed, we can be sure, in the weeks to come.
"At the end of the day," Fischler told them at a meeting in Prague at the end of last week, "you will have to convince your farmers that they will be better off inside the EU than outside."
Then he added darkly: "I would suggest that you start the process now."
Fischler is clearly worried that a negotiating position from the applicants, which starts from the point that the deal on the table is unreasonable (see guide-notes as above), will convey that message not only to the EU negotiators, who will understand that it is only a negotiating position and not to be taken too seriously, but also to farmers who will not, and therefore will.

Just to confuse this Kafkaesque scenario, Fischler told them that, with only six weeks left to sort everything out, the applicant nation farm ministers must pursue "a realistic approach in the endgame."
Pointing out that any extra cash squeezed out of the available farm budget for the newcomers "will not fall from the sky" and will have to come from the current member states, Fischler said: "We need realism and pragmatism. The last few weeks should be used to carefully assess what improvements in the EU's negotiating position you think you can justify, on the basis of objective data, convincing enough for the member states to be prepared to defend the results to their own farmers."
Oh yes, and don't waste time or energy trying to switch cash from one EU kitty to another: Fischler said "ingenious financial constructions" simply won't work.
So that's clear then: what is needed now is realism and pragmatism, coupled with an exaggerated statement of the national case for a better deal - exaggerations which each national minister must be able to reverse within seconds if and when the tactics fail.
This makes it all very difficult for farmers, who might make the mistake of believing that government grumbles about the agricultural terms on the table are genuine grumbles, and not just negotiating grumbles. Unless, of course, they are exposed eventually as genuine after all.
But thanks are due to Fischler for setting out the negotiating subtleties so clearly, and applicant governments are advised to keep a copy of his remarks close at hand, not just in the next few weeks, but for a future inside the EU, where the technique will be required time and time again.
As we all know, the gap between public relations and politics narrows by the day.