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Verheugen to visit
Malta next month
by Franco Aloisio in Strasbourg
The EU Enlargement Commissioner, Gunter Verheugen, will be
coming to Malta next month.
Speaking during the first session of the 14th meeting of the
Joint Parliamentary Committee being held at the European Parliament
building in Strasbourg, Mr Verheugen announced details of the
visit.
The Enlargement Commissioner was full of praise for Malta, describing
as “impressive” the progress made in negotiations
towards EU membership.
Mr Verheugen said Malta’s impressive progress put the country
in the lead among the Helsinki countries
“Malta is now close to reaching its objective to catch
up with the “Luxembourg Group”. This clearly illustrates
how the Commission has applied the differentiation principle
and how Malta has been able to benefit from this principle through
its efforts,” Mr Verheugen said.
The Luxembourg group is the grouping of candidate countries
which first started negotiations for EU membership. Malta is
part of the second group of countries, known as the “Helsinki
Group”, which started accession talks earlier this year.
Mr Verheugen said Malta continues to fulfil the political and
economic criteria of membership. The country has started an
economic adjustment process, with good economic results since
last year: Malta’s GDP annual growth has increased, unemployment
rate has decreased and budget deficit has been considerably
reduced, Mr Verheugen said.
“These results are very encouraging for the Maltese economy
and for Malta itself. They provide the best incentive to pursue
economic policy of industrial restructuring, fiscal stabilisation
and further opening of the economy,” he said.
Since last year, he said, Malta had made substantial progress
in aligning its legislation with the acquis communautaire. Malta
has partially or completely fulfilled a majority of the Accession
Partnership short-term priorities, while it started to reinforce
its administrative capacity to implement the acquis, Mr Verheugen
said.
“Further work is necessary to adopt and enforce the acquis
and we shall continue to support Malta’s efforts in this
direction. Particular attention needs to be paid in the areas
of environment and agriculture,” Mr Verheugen said.
The European Commissioner’s Enlargement Strategy Paper,
published last week together with the applicant countries’
progress reports, proposes an ambitious road map for the negotiations,
Mr Verheugen said, adding that the road map will allow the best
prepared countries to make full use of the differentiation principle.
“It was up to Malta to seize the opportunity,” he
said.
Real progress in negotiations depends more on the quality of
preparations made by each candidate country, than on the number
of chapters opened. “It is crucial for Malta to ensure
the highest quality in preparing position papers,” he said.
The EU Commission has prepared a concrete methodology for treating
the requests for transitional arrangements, Mr Verheugen said,
adding that the transitional periods should be limited in time
and scope and should not distort competition. The commission
will not consider requests for permanent derogations.
On the pre-accession aid to Malta, Mr Verheugen said the amount
allocated for Malta – 38 million EUROs for the period 2000-2004
– will not be increased for the time being.
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