Vassiliou hails EU budget reforms

GEORGE Vassiliou, Cyprus’ chief negotiator for EU accession talks, said yesterday the budget reforms passed this week by the EU heads of state and government at their Berlin summit was critically important to aspirant EU member states.

The budget agreement, following all night Thursday-Friday talks, paved the way for opening the European Union to 11 new members, six – including Cyprus – in a first wave, and five in a second.

Vassiliou, a former Cyprus president, spoke on the margins of the fifth meeting of the chief EU negotiators for Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. All six countries are in the first wave of EU enlargement. The two-day meeting opened yesterday in Limassol.

“For us, the six candidate member states, (the agreement) is of paramount importance, because if there was no agreement, then it is almost certain that there would have been a delay in the accession process,” Vassiliou said.

The ‘Agenda 2000’ budget package aims to stabilise EU spending on farm and regional aid programmes, which swallow most of its $94 billion annual budget.

The Limassol meeting is examining such issues as competition policy, free movement of goods and capital and the harmonisation of the island’s banking sector with EU law as well as the financial aspects of Agenda 2000.

Vassiliou said the meeting’s participants would try to co-ordinate to speed up their accession process.

Cyprus applied for full EU membership in 1990 after signing an association agreement in 1972 and a customs union protocol in 1987.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.