Negotiations with Romania concluded in 2004?

The European Commission will do its best to have Romania conclude the EU accession negotiations by late 2004, the European Commissioner for Enlargement Gunther Verheugen yesterday said at the end of the ninth meeting of the Romania-EU Association Council.
Verheugen added Romania’s was a bold roadmap, so that the Government would need to restructure major fields, such as justice, economy and administration.
EU’s president in office, the Greek Foreign minister Georgios Papandreou in his turn said Romania’s EU accession in 2007 was not only Romania’s goal but also the European Union’s, as the negotiations with Romania had progressed fast lately.
Romanian Foreign minister Mircea Geoana pointed out the European Commission was both interested and willing to conclude the negotiations with Romania and Bulgaria, which is great news. “All we had in common until now was the accession target date, 2007, but several weeks ago concluding negotiations in 2004 become another mutual goal,” Geoana said.
As for the problems that might arise until the end of the current European Commission’s term, i.e. October 2004, Geoana specified the Romanian authorities had to live up to the challenges of the difficult negotiation chapters – the financial ones. At the same time, a positive report from the European Commission is needed especially when it comes to granting the functional market economy status.
Political talks are in progress at the moment and the financial chapters are expected to be opened during the Irish EU Presidency. Meanwhile, a political lobby was conducted throughout Europe to have all the important political factors agree to EU granting substantial financial support to Romania, Geoana explained.
He added that things were “about to improve” in terms of administrative capacity. To that end, 500 European affairs advisors were supposed to be recruited from those young people who studied in Romania or abroad in order to work in public administration.
Another problem will be Romania’s capability to co-finance the projects to get EU funds through the PHARE, ISPA and SAPARD pre-accession programmes. As far as the “budget philosophy” for 2004 is concerned, we will have to come up with 40% of the EU supplied funds, if we want to be able to absorb this money, Geoana says, adding the economic ministries need to devise their investment and resource allocation plans.
Gunther Verheugen specified one of the issues the Government still needed to work on was the political criterion. The Romanian Foreign minister explained it was about the justice system, the administrative capacity, fighting corruption, the freedom of speech and the political parties’ law – all of which included in the political criterion for EU accession.