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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 19, 2002

EU Sets May Day 2004 as East Expansion Date

The European Union (EU) has set May 1, 2004 as "E-day," the date for the bloc's historic expansion into the eastern Europe, according to current EU presidency Denmark.


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The European Union (EU) has set May 1, 2004 as "E-day," the date for the bloc's historic expansion into the eastern Europe, according to current EU presidency Denmark.

EU has chosen May 1, 2004, because the ratification process will take some time, said Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moelleron Monday, alluding to the time needed by the parliaments of the existing 15 member states to approve the accession treaty.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels also agreed that 10 new members will participate fully in the European Parliament elections in June 2004 and in a planned conference on a future EU constitution.

"It was too optimistic to try for January 1 because we might have had a situation where some countries had not got through the ratification process. National parliaments have a right to have time to ratify," Moeller told a news conference following the ministers' talks.

The 10 leading EU candidates -- Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia -- plan to wrap up their complex accession talks at a summit in Copenhagen on Dec. 12-13.

Skeptics say bringing in 10 more governments and 75 million relatively poor people into the 370 million-strong EU will cost itdear and render it unworkable. Others say healing Europe's Cold War divide will create a world-beating economic bloc.

The ratification process will begin after the member states andcandidates have signed the accession treaty in Athens next April. All the candidates are expected to hold referendums during the course of 2003 on joining the wealthy bloc.


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