copenhagen criteria. however, under certain circumstances, an unilateral cba can be a suitable option in order to enhance the commitment to foreign exchange stability deriving from erm ii, but i would like to underline that this will not and cannot impose any unilateral obligation on the ecb besides those that are related to erm ii participation per se ; • the discipline entailed by cbas may be a good incentive to pursue stability - oriented macroeconomic policies in order to enhance convergence efforts before emu participation. nonetheless, this stability is not automatically warranted, the cause being related to complex adjustment mechanisms through which accession countries being in a market economy transition phase have to go ; • accession countries operating a sustainable cba would not necessarily have to face a double regime shift. however, if a cba would prove to be weak and not adapted to the erm ii framework, the ecb has made it very clear it would speak up and tell this country its opinion and make its concern known ; • and finally, i think the fashion of cba has also to be viewed within the recent experiences as for example in argentina. the exit strategy is key. 3. policy - mix • on average, fiscal deficits have widened in 2001 in accession countries. the sustainability of the budgetary situation in some countries is at stake. the forthcoming parliamentary elections in some countries, as well as large accession - related expenditures, are subject to amplifying this situation. monetary policy should be supported by an adequate fiscal policy in order to avoid a large risk of overburdening monetary policy. this is not only true for accession countries however. some concern already has been expressed towards some member states of the present euro area and i would like to voice it again. i want to stress that the strict compliance with the stability and growth pact is important just in order to give back to the political sphere the margin of manoeuvre to do policy in the fiscal area and record it is key to the credibility of the policy - mix and therefore also to the orderly functioning of emu. this understanding has been steady from its inception and now it is crucial to keep emu perennial ; • in the framework of the policy - mix, the ecb has accepted to be involved in an informal dialogue with governments and other political actors. this institutional setting has however been questioned recently. some voices have been heard advocating a reinforcement of the policy - mix coordination, even in this country, in view to

for the first time to three new countries. the next enlargement was in 1981 when greece joined europe, spain and portugal both following in 1986. when we started the maastricht negotiations, we knew already that there would be three additional candidates which joined europe in 1995 : finland, austria and sweden. even though the maastricht treaty was ratified in 1992, you ought to know that during the discussions and negotiations, we already tried to take into account the enlarged europe when we designed the built - up of the institutions that were to run the single currency. it is of course this time a little bid different insofar that the block of countries which are on the way to access europe is much larger. thus, thirteen countries are standing ready to join the new european area and later on the european currency zone as well. where do we stand as of today? we defined thirty - one chapters to be discussed with twelve countries. with one country, turkey, negotiations have not yet started. progress has been encouraging, but, as you know, you always start with the easiest chapters and you leave the most difficult ones to the end. so, as of end of april 2002, 73 % of total chapters were concluded. the most advanced country had still four open chapters, one of them being agriculture of course. the european summit last year decided that the negotiations ought to be concluded by the end of this year. now, with two elections looming in the two largest countries of the european union, it is sometimes a little bid difficult to come to common positions especially on the most difficult chapters that are still open. i can only express hope that the objective of concluding the negotiations by the end of this year will be fulfilled, and that it will not be due to a lack of common positions of the existing european member states that we are not able to come to final conclusions. if we would not come to final conclusions by the end of this year, it would become too tight to have any new accession country participating in the next european parliament elections to take place in 2004. but let us not forget that even at this stage, part of the internal preparations that the eu has embarked on is not yet finished. i speak about the so - called nice treaty which is to prepare partly the european institutions for the enlargement and which has not been ratified in all of our countries. but on the other hand, we have also in the meantime started a new exercise, the convention, which also has to come