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EC ministers divided over time- table for opening negotiations
BRUSSELS. Dec 8: European Community foreign ministers were divided Monday on whether to accelerate their timetable for opening negotiations with prospective EC members as urged by France and Germany, officials said, reports AFP.
A statement issued here simply noted the decision by the EC's Lisbon summit in June to hold off membership talks until ratification of the Maastricht Union Treaty iyas complete and the EC's longterm budget approved.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand, who met in Bonn last week, called for opening talks with EC candidates early next year even before Britain and Denmark ratified Maastricht.
A British spokesman here said Monday's statement was not an outright rejection of the French-German position.
But he added that it was "an open question" whether the EC would drop ratification of Maastricht as a pre-condition for membership talks.
He said there was little inclination to start the discussions before resolution of a fierce battle over the commu-• n«y's sevenyear budget, with
poorer EC. states resisting cutbacks in proposed' development funds.
The spokesman said the ministers, holding two days of talks here, preferred to leave the final decision to an EC summit opening Friday in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Sweden, Austria, Finland, Norway and Switzerland have applied for membership in the EC, and the first three have had -their candidacies endorsed by the community's executive commission.
The enlargement prqccss was further complicated Sunday by Switzerland’s rejection of membership in a free trade area linking the EC and the seven states of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The vote on the European Economic Area (EEA) was considered a test of Swiss sentiment on EC membership.
Opinion polls have shown opposition to the EC in the majority or gaining ground in all five candidates for membership,
The Swiss move also had a direct effect on the poorer EC states— Spain, Portugal. Ireland arid Greece — who want to be sure they will get sufficient development funds
before opening talks with new members.
The EFTA countries had promised them 2.5 billion dollar in loans and grants over five years but the question remained who would pick up the Swiss share, accounting for 27 per cent.
Spanish diplomats said Switzerland's EFTA partners would have to pay the tab if the Berne government did not agree to do so in a bilateral deal.
Portuguese diplomats also said that the EEA treaty should be renegotiated to liberalise terms on the free movement of people that had been tightened up to please the insular Swiss. i
Police use water cannon to disperse fanners
Another report says: Baton-wielding Belgian police used water cannon to disperse about 200 stone throwing farmers protesting ah EC-US farm deal that would cut agricultural subsidies.
The farmers, who threw stones, firecrackers, eggs and beer cans at the paramilitary gendarmes, were demonstrating outside a meeting of European Community agriculture ministers discussing the
farm deal which is part of the • General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
An AFP correspondent said that as the demonstrators disperse, they hurled stones against the windows of the EC , Headquarters.
About 1,000 Belgian police were deployed to protect the EC and had erected barriers of barbed wire, permitting cars to pass one by one.
The police prevented Belgian farmers from driving tractors through Brussels during the rush hour as they had planned in order to signal their opposition to the EC concessions on farm subsidies.
Farmers in the community, who are heavily indebted, fear that concessions made over agricultural experts will reduce markets and subsidies for their produce.
France, which has a powerful farm lobby, is threatening to veto an overall GAIT deal to protest the farm arrangement reached- in Washington on November 19.
Demonstrators carried the flags of several EC countries,, and banners reading: "can the USA alone decide our fate?"
On Sunday farmers built a wall of bricks around a MacDonald restaurant in the
town of Gand in northwestern Belgium in a protest against US interests.
On December, 1,50,000 farmers from across the community and Japan marched through Strasbourg, eastern France, to demonstrate outside the European parliament.
Key week for European unit,
Reuter adds: A key week for the cause of European unity got off to a shaky start with Swiss voters rejecting a plan to link the EC with EFTA.
Five days before an Edinburgh summit billed as the last chance for the EC to undo the damage caused by Danish citizens, "no” to the Maastricht Treaty, the Swiss have narrowly voted against joining a so-called European Economic Area (EEA).
EC foreign ministers arriving in Brussels for two days of pre-summit talks Insisted the Silan for a common market rdm the arctic to the Mediterranean would still go ahead.
Governments sympathetic to the integration cause are now crossing their fingers in the hope that the Swiss vote will not affect the public mood
any further failed.
The equally narrow Danish vote in June against the Maastricht Treaty sparked a turbulent period of uncertainty for politicians who previously thought its ratification by the 12 EC states was little more than a formality.
EC diplomats had laboured so long and so hard and made so many intricate compromises on the text of the Maastricht Treaty that they were shocked when the people said 'no'.
The constitutional lawyers labouring over how to make the Maastricht text more palatable to the Danish Parliament and people without having to renegotiate It arc now having to think also about procedures for salvaging the EA minus Switzerland.
An intricate British formula for surmounting the Danish problem has been criticised by some of its partners a going too far and by some Danish politicians as not going far enough.
Finding a compromise solution in Edinburgh is only half the battle as the Danes could always vote "no" again If they found the deal was too muddy
The pre summit foreign ministers meeting was due to
spend part of its time discussing ways of making the EC’s business more attractive and understandable to ordinary citizens.
Transparency" is one topic on the agenda. Here, the British presidency is likely to suggest throwing open very occasional ministerial meetings to the press.
Another watchword is "subsidiarity" — deciding when tasks should be dealt with by the EC and when they should be left to national government. 'The summit will have no difficulty agreeing about subsidiarity because nobody cares about It," said one EC official.
The summit will also look at the Idea of an EC economic growth Initiative as well as expanding its own finances, but some diplomats arc warr. ig against high expectations given the existing pressures of EC and national budgets.
With EC unemployment stuck obstinately tn double figures, the question arises whether Jobless Europeans will be reassured that their plight will be discussed at Edinburgh, but as a lowish priority.
Perhaps the solution would be lo dissolve the people, said one diplomat contemplating. Inconvenient voting results.