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Poles hit out at 'national egoism' in France, Germany and Britain
It's getting ugly over there.
Nah, it's "morning in Europe."
The budget summit fiasco has left Poland feeling bitter that richer EU members particularly Britain, until now a close Polish ally were unwilling to be generous to the much poorer countries that entered the Union last year. "We see it as a fault in national egoism in many countries," Jaroslaw Pietras, Poland's European affairs minister, told the Financial Times, naming France, Britain and Germany as particularly guilty of being influenced by the short-term concerns of the voters at home instead of the long-term good of Europe.

Senior British figures acknowledge the collapse of the deal was bad news for the EU's 10 new accession states because the lack of a budget agreement threatens to delay projects and slash structural payments.

Having often posed in the past as the champion of the "new Europe" against the Franco-German core, Tony Blair, British prime minister, will therefore try to keep the 10 new member states on his side by pledging to try to get a budget deal agreed in the next six months.

Given the dramatic clash between Mr Blair and President Jacques Chirac of France in Brussels last week, it is hard to see a deal being brokered rapidly. Mr Chirac ruled out any attempt to reopen the deal on Common Agricultural Policy spending agreed in October 2002. "It was not the most acrimonious European council I have been at but it was certainly up there," said a UK official, suggesting that President Chirac and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder had rounded on Mr Blair on Friday night.

In Poland there is a sense of unfairness that old EU members, suddenly afraid of their eurosceptical voters, have taken to defending their national interests single-mindedly without thinking much about the EU as a whole. Warsaw is mindful of the enormous benefits gained by other poor countries included in earlier enlargements such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain and is worried that similar generosity may not be on offer to the former communist states who joined last year.
Funny, the French and the Belgians were looking to you new EU members to fix their problems.
It is not just a question of money. Only Britain, Ireland and Sweden allowed workers from the new member states access to their labour markets. Old Europe has also been wary about reducing barriers for service providers, hugely important for poor, high-unemployment countries like Poland.

But wealthy European self-interest may exact a price. "Rich countries cannot say that we aren't going to give you a free market and aren't going to give you much money either," said Mr Pietras. "If we get no compensation, then we want competition."

Marek Belka, Poland's prime minister, had offered a last-minute proposal to reduce payments to new EU members, an idea that Mr Blair rejected. "If there had been a will to compromise, then the offer by the new member states might have been accepted," Jan Truszczynski, Poland's deputy foreign minister, told the Financial Times. "If Britain had signalled its minimum conditions earlier, a compromise might have been possible."

For Poland, the failure to pass an EU budget for 2007-2013 could have enormous consequences. If the budget is adopted next year, under the Austrian presidency, funding for some Polish projects could be delayed. If there is no new budget, then a provisional budget would go into effect that would see annual structural fund transfers to Poland cut to €4.6bn ($5.7bn, £3.1bn) from the €8.7bn under the failed Luxembourg proposal.

The next EU budget cycle is Poland's best chance of catching up to western Europe. Poland could get a total of €81bn, including both regional and agricultural funds. The budget cycle after that would be for an EU that included much poorer Romania and Bulgaria, and would also be looking toward possible Turkish membership, leaving much less for Poland. Mr Truszczynski said: "A future budget compromise may be less advantageous for Poland."

Polish anger at the old EU's lack of financial generosity is matched by dismay that an inward-looking Union will have no time or energy to think of further expansion. Warsaw is in favour of Turkey joining the club but is most interested in attracting Ukraine, which would move Poland from Europe's periphery closer to its centre.

Gunter Verheugen, vice-president of the European Commission, sounded a cautious note about a future enlargement of the EUover the weekend, saying, "No new promises can be made." While Bulgaria and Romania have already completed accession negotiations, the EU's commitment to these two countries provided for "a postponement of membership, should [they] prove insufficiently ready", he told Germany's Bild-am-Sonntag weekly.

Mr Verheugen, a former enlargement commissioner in the previous Commission, also stressed that accession talks with Turkey, scheduled to begin in October, would be open-ended and might not necessarily end with full EU-membership.
Posted by: too true 2005-06-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=122075