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Poland, Spain to hammer out EU budget
The leaders of Poland and Spain will seek to hammer out their countries' rivalry for the European Union's economic catch-up aid, at their annual summit meeting on Tuesday.
Meeting two days before the 25-nation bloc's leaders hold their year-end summit in Brussels, Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka and Spanish counterpart Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will talk "man-to-man" on the thorny issue, Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz says.
Poland and Spain, former allies whose ties have cooled since the Socialist government of Zapatero took power in March, are both set to be key candidates for development aid in forthcoming negotiations on the EU's 2007-2013 budget.
As the biggest of the 10 mainly ex-communist bloc countries which joined the EU on May 1, Poland is expected to lay claim to the sort of EU economic aid which Spain has enjoyed so far.
"Spain, which is currently the biggest beneficiary of European solidarity, is worried that this situation will suddenly change in favour of the new EU members, which are poorer than it is," Polish analyst Jedrzej Bielecki said.
Now, the Polish media has accused Madrid of engineering things so that a reference to the EU's concept of “solidarity” be removed from a draft paper on the EU's budget priorities for 2007-2013.
That concept of solidarity is close to the heart of the Warsaw authorities, as the prospect of billions of euros of EU cash for poorer members tempted many Poles to vote in favour of joining the bloc, in a referendum on membership.
Some 400 billion euros of EU structural development funds have been pencilled into the bloc's draft budget for the 2007-2013 period.
Even if the two leaders manage to settle their differences on the issue, tough negotiations will still lie ahead within the EU, as the biggest contributors to the budget want to pay less in.
The six so-called net contributors to the EU budget - Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden - called at the end of 2003 for the budget to absorb no more than 1% of EU GDP - down from 1.14% at the moment.
"In fact, if the EU budget is limited to 1% of gross domestic product, neither Poland, nor Spain will get the aid they are hoping for," Bielecki said.
Belka and Zapatero will also have other things to talk about, including the situation in Poland's neighbour Ukraine, access by Polish workers to Spain's labour market, international security and the fight against terrorism.
The atmosphere is expected to be less warm than at a summit a year ago, when, under the Spanish conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar, Warsaw and Madrid had forged a partnership in talks on an EU constitution, at a time when both countries were contributing troops to a Polish-led force in Iraq.
After Zapatero took office, he promptly withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq, and did a U-turn on the EU constitution, softening its position in a row over the voting clout of member states following the bloc's enlargement.
Zapatero was scheduled to arrive in Warsaw late on Monday, accompanied by several ministers, including Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and Farm and Fisheries Minister Elena Espinosa.
The ministers for social affairs, the economy, infrastructure, education and the deputy defence minister are also on the team.
Source: http://www.bday.co.za |
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