Enlargement received strong support in the
European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in Brussels on
19 March 2003.
55 members voted in favour of the Committee Chairman Elmar
Brok’s report on the conclusion of enlargement
negotiations. There were two votes against and one
abstention.
The Committee also endorsed individual
reports on each of the 10 candidate countries. The votes on
the individual reports:
Candidate country | Yes | No | Abstained |
Czech Republic | 54 | 2 | 1 |
Estonia | 56 | 2 | 0 |
Cyprus | 57 | 1 | 2 |
Latvia | 55 | 1 | 2 |
Lithuania | 57 | 1 | 2 |
Hungary | 58 | 1 | 0 |
Malta | 58 | 0 | 2 |
Poland | 53 | 4 | 3 |
Slovenia | 56 | 1 | 1 |
Slovakia | 56 | 1 | 2 |
There was some controversy surrounding
the report on the Czech Republic because of the 1946 Benes
Decrees. The Committee resolved it with a compromise
amendment, which reads: “We assume that following the entry
of the new Member States, as per the treaty, all European
Union citizens in all countries have the same rights, and
cannot be discriminated against by any laws, judicial
decisions, or official measures.”
The European Parliament had waited for a
compromise on the part of the Czech Republic. It came on 15
March in the form of a political statement from the new
Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who condemned as unacceptable
the deportation of the Sudeten Germans and the crimes
committed against them after World War II.
The Committee also adopted a
recommendation regarding the financing of enlargement,
which will be submitted to the plenary vote at the Brussels
session on 26 and 27 March. The MEPs have foreseen two
possible solutions to the problem of Annex XV of the
Accession Treaty, which breaches the Parliament’s
prerogative to have a say in budgetary matters. One of the
solutions is to remove Annex XV from the Treaty, and the
other to say that the figures in the Annex are of
indicative nature. It the Parliament and the Council reach
an agreement on this in the following days, the
recommendation will not be submitted to a vote in the
plenary.