European Union finance ministers met with counterparts from a dozen countries due to join the union in the years ahead for a first look at the economic and financial impact of the EU's expansion plans.
The session signaled the growing desire of EU finance ministers for a hand in weighing newcomers' ability to meet membership requirements, officials said.
Central bank chiefs from across Europe attended the meeting in Sweden that was preceded by EU declarations that there was no attempt to complicate chances of Cyprus, Malta, a slew of East European nations and, eventually, Turkey to qualify for membership.
"We do not want to put up new hurdles,'' said European Commission President Romano Prodi ahead of the meeting.
The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Cyprus, Slovenia and Malta may join as early as 2004. Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia are in a much slower group. Trailing them is Turkey, which must yet open membership talks and whose chances of joining remain dim.
From the day in March, 1999, when negotiations opened with the most promising candidates, enlargement has been in the hands of foreign ministers which has given the EU's most ambitious undertaking a very political tone.
Under EU rules, newcomers must be democracies, living in peace with their neighbors and have functioning market economies. The finance ministers want the enlargement debate to focus in more detail on macroeconomic, fiscal and financial issues.
In a report to the meeting, the European Commission highlighted problem areas. It said newcomers joining can expect inflows of investments that will fuel rapid growth. However, ``potentially volatile capital inflows'' can mean instability if there are no reliable rules governing banks, investments, taxation, pension funds or insurance or governments cannot finance "large current account deficits.''
The report said state ownership of banks was still significant in some countries and that ``financial markets in candidate countries were still too underdeveloped to fully support economic growth.''
Also,
the corporate sector merits strong attention,'' said the report using very polite language to say too many companies in the enlargement nations cook their books and get away with it.
AP