Mr President, Commissioner, Poland, the country for which I am rapporteur, is the largest and most important of the countries which are preparing to enter the European Union, but it is also, as we know, the most problematic, so much so that there have been rumours that it might be excluded from the first group, the group of countries which are to join the Union first. These rumours are groundless and I am pleased to be able to tell you and, most importantly, our Polish friends, that we met with the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lamberto Dini, yesterday, and he categorically denied ever having heard such a possibility being voiced during international meetings. Poland will join the European Union when both it and the Union are ready, but it will certainly be part of the first group. Having said this, we must not deny that there are difficulties, and my report is in fact a summary of the progress made and the difficulties encountered along the road to accession. The Warsaw government and parliament have done their utmost in recent months to speed up the transposal of Community legislation. The Polish authorities have also recently carried out major reforms and, although the Commission’s last annual report on Poland’s progress towards accession was somewhat negative, I hope and trust – and in this I am reassured by Commissioner Vergheugen’s words just now – that the report which is published in a few weeks time will be more encouraging. Nevertheless, as I was saying, there is still a great deal to do in Poland in terms of administrative reform, industrial restructuring and, of course, comprehensive structural change right across the agricultural sector. Therefore, in order to overcome these obstacles, to resolve these issues, the Poles – like the citizens of the other candidate countries – need incentives. If, for example, we place a question mark over whether it will be possible for the citizens and workers of candidate countries to move freely across the European Union right from the word go, if we want to continue to deny the citizens of Eastern Europe recognition of that right which is one of the fundamental principles of the Union, then we are further diminishing support for the difficult reforms which must take place before they can join the Union. This brings us to another sore point: public support, both within and outside the European Union. Support from the public is poor and fades with the passage of time, as Pat Cox and many of the Members who spoke after him pointed out, so roll on the information campaign announced by the Commission, although I must say that the amount of funding allocated to this campaign did seem rather low. Despite the words of the Commissioner, who declared himself passionately in favour of enlargement, Brussels sometimes gives the impression that it is trying to slow down the process, and this is reflected in the attitude of the candidate countries whose citizens become despondent and confused. We must convince the citizens of both Europe in its present form and the Europe which is to come, the Europe of the future, the enlarged Europe, that the costs – which are heavy and onerous – are still less than the benefits which will come in the immediate future. Many of us feel that it would have been a good idea to specify the dates for accession in order to encourage the countries and give them a sense of our continuing support. In the past, specifying dates has served to speed up the integration process, but it was difficult to come to an agreement on this point and so we decided unanimously to refrain from discussing the dates in our individual reports but to give a – if the truth be told – rather vague indication in Mr Elmer Brok’s report. In Poland, there is talk, at least at official level, of 2003. Even if accession does not come about in 2003 it must take place as soon as possible, and we must make every effort to make it happen for we are in debt to those countries – the countries of Eastern Europe – which are as European as the countries of Western Europe and whose only crime, as the Commissioner himself pointed out, was to find themselves, through no fault of their own, on the wrong side of an artificial line across the middle of our continent. There are too many promises which we have made to Poland, the countries of Eastern Europe, the former Communist countries, and failed to keep. ‘Rid yourselves of Communism,’ we said, ‘and we will help you’. They got rid of Communism and we did not help them. So we cannot be surprised if, faced with the increasing divide between rich and poor and the spread of crime, prostitution and drugs, an increasing proportion of the citizens of these countries have reached the point where they would prefer to revert to the old regime and live under a Communist dictatorship. Should this trend gather momentum, it would be clear confirmation that our policy for Eastern Europe has failed. Ladies and gentlemen, let us do our utmost to avoid this.

Political group: PPE-DE