Belgian Premier increases hopes for EU entry

VILNIUS - In his tour of all three Baltic states last week, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt visited Lithuania Feb. 14 and 15. He said that Lithuania had made great strides in negotiations for European Union membership last year, and he was confident it would be able to catch up with the candidate states that began their negotiations earlier.

At a briefing session organized after his meeting with Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus on Feb. 15, the Belgian prime minister said Belgium would strive to keep up the fast pace of negotiations with Lithuania when his country took over the EU presidency in the second half of this year.

"Lithuania achieved very good results and significant progress last year. What we want to do during the Belgian presidency is to maintain the speed of the EU entry negotiations," Verhofstadt said.

He emphasized that for Lithuania, introducing mandatory driving insurance and amending an article in the Lithuanian constitution forbidding foreigners to buy agricultural land were important issues in negotiations. The Lithuanian Parliament plans to amend the Lithuanian constitution so that citizens of EU and NATO countries as well as citizens of candidate-countries to these organizations can buy land.

There is already general agreement about such constitutional changes between the ruling centrist coalition in Lithuania and both left and right opposition parties.

Verhofstadt noted the need for cooperation between the three Baltic states and what he called similar group comprising Benelux - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

"Lithuania, which began EU negotiations last February, has come to terms on seven chapters out of a total of 31," Petras Zapolskas, director of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry's information and culture department, told The Baltic Times. "Negotiations on the eighth chapter on culture and audio-visual policy are almost finished."

Negotiations are currently taking place on all other chapters except two. These two chapters concern institutional reforms, and candidate countries will come to them only after completing negotiations on the other 29.

Like its two Baltic neighbors, Lithuania is attempting to end EU negotiations by 2002 in order to become a EU full member Jan. 1, 2004.

Verhofstadt became something of a hero in Lithuania during the EU summit in Nice in 2000. After a lengthy debate, it was decided that Lithuania should have seven votes in the EU's Council of Ministers. The draft project gave only six votes to Lithuania. France said that five would be enough.

Verhofstadt announced that Belgium would disrupt the summit and no agreement would be reached if medium-sized countries Lithuania and Rumania didn't get two additional votes each. Belgium wants to create a bloc of smaller countries in the EU's Council of Ministers that could act as a counterbalance to the EU heavyweights.