Brussels - The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, yesterday welcomed the European Commission's Agenda 2000 document as "a very important step in the process of preparing the Union for challenges ahead", Patrick Smyth reports.
But the Minister put down a strong marker that Ireland would fight to retain a substantial share in structural funding. Mr Burke, who was attending his first foreign ministers' meeting, insisted that Ireland would "still have substantial development needs and will continue to require significant levels of funding to meet these needs and to consolidate the economic progress which we have made."
