EU: The EU and candidate countries began the final phase of enlargement negotiations yesterday, but immediately clashed over the financial terms on offer.
The 10, mostly ex-communist applicants hoping to join in 2004, criticised the funding package agreed last Friday by EU leaders in Brussels as insufficient and described the proposed farm aid as especially mean.
Despite the criticisms, senior EU officials and east European leaders struck a generally optimistic note after discussing the package, saying they believed they could wind up accession talks at a summit in Copenhagen in mid-December.
"Today we have started final negotiations for the historic enlargement of the EU," said Danish Prime Minister, Mr Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "The reunification of Europe is close," added European Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi.
The Brussels summit endorsed Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta as ready to complete the accession talks in December and join in 2004.
Bulgaria and Romania, which are not expected to join the EU until 2007 at the earliest, won reassurances that their negotiations would continue at full speed.
Under the EU's funding deal brokered last Friday, farmers from the candidate states will receive direct payments from the day they join but will only reach the same level as existing members after a decade.