The EU last night set in train its most substantial enlargement yet with agreement by leaders on the formal opening next March 31st of an "inclusive" accession process with 10 central and eastern European countries (CEECs).
But the summit also backed Commission proposals for immediate formal accession negotiations at Inter-Governmental Conference level with only the five most advanced CEECs - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Estonia - and Cyprus.
The other five candidate countries - Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia - will take part in a screening process to assess their detailed readiness for accession, will be involved in more ministerial-level contacts, and have the opportunity of annual reviews to see when they are ready to join the fast track.
Speaking at the meeting, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, restated Ireland's commitment to enlargement and said the move marked "a decisive step towards a new Europe". The new democracies were impatient to join, he said.
Mr Andrews praised the Commission's pre-accession strategy but put down a marker that Ireland wanted to see a continuation of the EU's cohesion strategy and generous transitional arrangements for countries losing their eligibility for maximum structural funding.
But leaders were unwilling to deal yesterday with the issue of reform of the EU's internal policies, most notably structural funding and the CAP, because overall spending limits are deeply politically contentious in Germany and Spain.
Agreement on the fast-track approach for the "5+1" ends months of argument from the Danes and Swedes who had hoped to see Latvia and Lithuania included in the first group. The EU hopes that the "inclusive" language of the declaration today will be sufficient assurance to those not in the first group.
French and Belgian demands that the declaration should also reiterate the Amsterdam Treaty protocol insistence on institutional reform of the EU before enlargement will be addressed this morning.
At Amsterdam leaders failed to agree on changing the composition of the Commission to accommodate new members and changes in the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers.
The enlargement process will be formally launched with all 10 and Cyprus at a foreign ministers' meeting on March 31st after which the EU will open individual InterGovernmental Conferences for accession talks with the five and Cyprus.
All 11 will also be part of a laborious, systematic screening process under which the Commission examines with each the 80,000 pages of acquis communautaire, the full body of EU legislation, case law and administrative practice which they each have to adopt.
The Danes and Swedes had hoped to postpone the formal differentiation between the advance guard and the laggards until after the screening process. But the Commission insists that such an approach would be unviable as screening could take two years or more and there is no reason why the first five should not already be engaged in negotiations in parallel.
