Essay Database

Poland's new left-of-centre government has offered the European Union concessions in a number of key negotiating areas. Prime Minister Leszek Miller and his team hope through more accommodating positions on migration of workers and foreign ownership of farmland to catch up with the protracted EU accession talks. Under the former government of Buzek, Poland displayed little willingness for compromise. Under former Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, Warsaw had insisted on an eighteen-year "grace period" for the …

…Miller hopes the new Polish flexibility will be rewarded. He thinks Polish farmers should be allowed a fair share of the direct subsidies the EU pays to farmers the moment Poland joins the EU, possibly in 2004. The Western member states want to exclude the newcomers from the funds that have been reserved for farmers under the current budget (which runs until 2006); Warsaw thinks that's unacceptable -- and that has not changed under the new government.