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Romania’s Road to Accession - The Need for an Environmental Focus

2. The Race for Accession

Enlargement negotiations were formally opened on 31 March 1998 with the so-called Luxembourg group of countries - Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Cyprus.⁴ Following strong pressure from the remaining countries, it was agreed at the December 1999 European Council in Helsinki to take a more flexible, multi-speed approach to enlargement and to admit all of the candidate countries to negotiations.⁵ Formal negotiations were then opened on 15 February 2000 with the Helsinki Group, i.e., Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Malta.

2.1 The Process of Negotiating Accession

Accession negotiations are carried out individually with each country, on the basis of a thorough screening of the acquis (as divided in 31 chapters based on different policy sectors). During the screenings, the applicant countries are asked:

A chapter is provisionally closed when the EU is satisfied that the applicant country can effectively meet the obligations therein at the time of accession or within an agreed transition period. The EU has agreed to consider transitional periods if the applicant countries will not be able to comply fully with the requirements of the respective legislation on the day of EU membership, e.g., where financially heavy investment will be required or where immediate compliance would have unacceptable social implications. The table on the next page provides an overview of the status of accession negotiations as of December 2002.

The main sticking points in the last sprint for accession were the chapters on agriculture, financial and budgetary provisions, and institutions. The agriculture chapter negotiations opened up tensions between those Member States that are currently receiving large net benefits from subsidies and direct payments under the existing Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and those candidate countries who were initially told that their farmers would not enjoy such generous subsidies for the initial period after accession.⁶ Nonetheless, the outcome of the European Council in Copenhagen was a tailor-made package which satisfied the applicants’ concerns, including a rural development package of 5.1 billion EUR for 2004-2006, direct aids for farmers to be phased in over ten years starting with 25% of the full EU rate in 2004, 30% in 2005, and 35% in 2006, as well as full and immediate access to CAP market measures (e.g., export refunds).

The financial and budgetary provisions chapter determines what each Member State (and soon-to-be Member States) will pay into the EU budget. Although negotiations of this particular chapter lasted until the very last minute of the Copenhagen summit, negotiators of the applicant countries went back home with the EU commitment to allocate a total of 40.9 billion EUR during the first two years of membership. Computations put on the negotiating table in September 2002 indicated that a few of the candidate countries might initially pay more into the EU budget than they would receive in benefits.⁷ While the new Member States would be eligible for higher amounts of aid from EU agricultural and regional subsidy payments, these funds would not be available until after the new Member States would be required to start paying into the EU budget.⁸ In light of this reasoning, the Copenhagen Council decided to provide prospective members with an additional package of 987 MEUR for temporary budget compensation during the period 2004-2006. In addition, a special cash flow facility amounting to 2.4 billion EUR is to be allocated during the same period of time.

Table on Accession Negotiations (European Commission website)
20 December 2002

Provisional closure of the institutional chapter resulted in a EU commitment that acceding States will be able to participate in the 2004 European Parliament elections and that commissioners from the new Member States will join the current Commission as from the day of accession on 1 May 2004. A new Commission should take office in November 2004, the date on which the provisions contained in the Nice Treaty concerning the Commission and voting in the Council will enter into force.

Nonetheless, the chapter on institutions cannot be fully decided before the EU Member States agree on how to reform the EU governance framework so that it can cope with ten new Member States. The various issues at stake are being discussed in working groups in the context of the Convention on the Future of Europe, which has been working since 2001 on a draft European constitution. The first outline for a European constitution was released on 28 October 2002.⁹

The first section describes the EU as "a Union of European States which, while retaining their national identities, closely co-ordinate their policies at European level, and administer certain common competen-cies on a federal basis". The draft suggests that a President be appointed to run the European Council and act as the union’s driving force and figure head. It also proposes creation of a Congress of the Peoples of Europe – a body of national and European members of Parliament – to confirm the appointment of the President and to review the state of the union. The draft notes an intention to set out clearly defined areas of exclusive EU competence, areas where competencies are shared between the EU and Member States and areas of national competency.

Areas to be clarified include the size of the European Commission, whether the European Parliament should have one or two chambers, and the number of official languages in an enlarged EU, so it is not clear how the draft constitution will reform the EU institutions. Target date for finalisation of the constitution is summer 2003, when the next Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) will take place.¹⁰ The new Member States will participate fully in this IGC, and Romania and Bulgaria have been granted an observer status.

Much remains to be done before accession effectively takes place in spring 2004. The text of the Accession Treaty, a 6,000-page tome, will need to be finalised and agreed by all parties. It will need European Parliament approval and unanimous decision by the Council of Ministers.¹¹ The Accession Treaty will be signed by the fifteen Member States and the ten Member States-to-be in Athens’ Acropolis on 16 April 2003.

After signature, the Treaty will be submitted for ratification by all 25 States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements. It is envisaged that for all Candidate Countries, except Cyprus, referenda will take place. Hungary’s referendum is the first one scheduled in April 2003, followed by Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic before the summer starts. The European Commission will be monitoring the interim period to provide further guidance to the acceding states and to make sure that they are indeed carrying out all the promises made during negotiations. In addition, safeguard clauses to be attached to the Accession Treaty will provide for measures to deal with unforeseen developments that may arise during the first three years of accession.

2.2 Romania’s Negotiations with the EU and Public Support for Accession

In 1974, Romania became the first country of Central and Eastern Europe to open official relations with the European Community, when an agreement including Romania in the Community’s Generalized System of Preferences was signed. Formal diplomatic relations between Romania and the European Union were opened in 1990, after the demise of communism in Romania.

Romania became party to a Trade and Co-operation Agreement with the EU in 1991 and its Europe Agreement with the EU entered into force in 1995. The Europe Agreements started the enlargement process and covered trade, political dialogue, commitment to legal approximation, and co-operation in fields of industry, environment, transport and customs.

On 22 June 1995, Romania submitted its formal application for EU membership. Four years later, in the Commission’s Regular Report of 1999 on Romania’s Progress Towards Accession, the Commission recommended the commencement of accession negotiations with Romania.¹²

The EU started formal accession negotiations with Romania in February 2000. In 2001, the EU drew up an Accession Partnership for Romania and all the other candidate countries, outlining the priority actions to be taken by each candidate country, for programming of EU financial assistance for implementation.

By the end of 2001, Romania had provisionally closed negotiations on nine of the 31 chapters of the acquis. By November 2002, Romania had closed a further 6 chapters. This leaves Romania with 16 chapters still to negotiate including Chapter 22 on Environment.

On 13 November 2002, the European Commission issued a new road-map for Romania¹³; one month later the European Council in Copenhagen endorsed the document. The roadmap aims to support the 2007¹⁴ target date for accession by identifying short and medium term benchmarks against which Romania’s progress can be monitored, and by providing increased financial assistance from the date of the first round of accessions. It will be updated periodically according to new developments and progress in negotiations, including any new issue that may arise in the revised Accession Partnerships to be adopted in 2003.

There is strong support for enlargement in Romania. In March 2002, the Commission’s first Eurobarometer report on the candidate countries showed that 78% of Romanians surveyed thought accession would bring advantages to their country.¹⁵ In July 2002, another poll revealed that, if a referendum on joining the EU was to be held then, 76% of those interviewed would vote favourably, and only 4% said they would vote against accession.¹⁶

Romanian’s image of the EU
(from March 2002 Eurobarometer Survey

2.3 The Environment Chapter in the Accession Negotiations

The environmental acquis communautaire are considered among the most difficult of any of the Chapters to implement. Formal opening of negotiations of the Environment Chapter took place for the front running applicant countries towards the end of 2000. In March 2001, Slovenia became the first applicant country to close provisional negotiations on the Environment Chapter. By the end of 2001, eight of the candidate countries had provisionally closed their Environment Chapter negotiations. Malta was the most recent country to provisionally close the Environment Chapter on 30 September 2002, while Bulgaria and Romania are still in negotiations.

A chapter is provisionally closed only when the EU considers that a candidate country understands the obligations and investments needed and has a plan for carrying out all that is required. If a transitional period after the date of accession is requested, the plan must give details on the actions that will be taken in order to achieve compliance by the end of the extra time period, including how such actions will be financed.

Concerning transition periods for the environmental acquis, DG Environment has signalled the following acceptable and non-acceptable positions:

The table below provides the transition periods that have been agreed to date with those candidate countries that have provisionally closed the Environment Chapter.

Transition periods agreed at provisional closure of Environment Chapter

Requests for transitional measures need to be justified by detailed implementation plans ensuring that compliance with the acquis will be reached over time. These plans also allow Candidate Countries to define intermediate targets which will be legally binding. Transitional requests will become Annexes to the Accession Treaty and will be closely monitored upon accession. Hence, transitional measures aim to allow the future Member States to deal with the legacy of the past but do not allow efforts to attract new investments with lower environmental standards.

2.4 Romania’s Negotiating Challenge in the Environment Sector

Romania was the last CEE candidate country to open negotiations on the Environment Chapter in March 2002. The Ministry of Waters and Environmental Protection (MWEP) has lead responsibility for negotiation of this chapter. The position paper prepared by the MWEP for these negotiations assumes an accession date of 1 January 2007 as a working hypothesis for finalising its preparations for EU accession. It has pledged to implement the environmental acquis communautaire by that date, except for the following Directives, for which it has requested transition periods.

Transition periods requested by Romania in environment sector

The information the MWEP has submitted for these transitional period requests has not yet satisfied the Commission. It has given the MWEP a deadline of October 2003 to submit additional information on its plans for effective enforcement of the acquis and for institutional development of the national, regional and local administrative structures for environmental management. Within that time period, the MWEP must also prepare clear implementation plans including financing strategies for all Directives where there may be delays in implementation, with a possibility of revision of some transition periods. This will require compilation of inventories of the investment projects, estimates of costs, and realistic plans for financing and construction of infrastructure.

In response to the EU’s request for further information, the MWEP is currently preparing a Complementary Position Paper for Environmental Protection, to be finished in October 2003. It expects to reach provisional closure of the Environment Chapter sometime in 2004.

In the meantime, the MWEP has set the ambitious goal for itself of completing legal transposition for all environmental acquis, as the stood at 2000, by the end of 2003, and to complete a process of setting in place the necessary administrative structures to be able to demonstrate preparedness for implementation – and readiness for accession – as early as possible. Such a goal is intended to meet the short-term benchmarks laid out in the Commission’s roadmap, which emphasise the need to focus on developing implementation capacities (including increasing human resources at local level and developing implementation plans together with financing strategies via a coherent legislative procedure.

2.5 EU Assistance for Accession

The European Community finances three pre-accession instruments to assist the CEE candidate countries in their pre-accession preparations.

The PHARE Programme, which has an annual budget of 1,560 MEUR, aids the candidate countries by providing technical assistance, often in the form of twinning programmes involving Member State officials with specific administrative experience, and by investing in the more impoverished regions of applicant countries. The SAPARD programme, in contrast, finances agricultural and rural development, and can sometimes be used to finance certain types of environmental measures for rural communities. ISPA – the Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-accession – splits its annual budget of 1,040 MEUR 50/50 between major environmental projects and transport infrastructure projects.

During the eight-year period 1992–1999, the PHARE programme provided approximately 1.2 billion EUR of assistance to Romania – an average of 150 MEUR a year. In the three-year period 2000-2002 the total financial assistance available to Romania amounted to some 260 MEUR from PHARE, 150 MEUR from SAPARD, and between 208 and 270 MEUR from ISPA – an average of 220 MEUR a year. The new roadmap for Romania indicates that this amount should increase progressively from 2004 to reach the level of an additional 40% in 2006. However, such an increase will be conditional on making progress as set out in the roadmaps and on ensuring sufficient absorptive capacity to effectively use the funds. The Accession Partnerships will continue to be the basis for programming pre-accession assistance, but will need to be complemented with the priorities established in the roadmaps, Regular Reports and revised National Development Plans.

The EU also provides other sources of assistance. DG Enlargement’s TAIEX Directorate provides technical assistance and advice on transposition, implementation and enforcement of the acquis through expert missions, seminars and workshops. The current 2000-2004 phase of LIFE, the Financial Instrument for the Environment, has a budget of 640 million EUR which it uses for co-financing environmental initiatives within the EU and candidate countries including Romania. Lastly, there is the TEMPUS programme aimed specifically at the higher education sector. Institutions from existing Member States are paired up with institutions in a partner country to assist the institutions in their modernisa-tion through a project-structured relationship.

Since 1999, the Commission has been working with the candidate countries to assist them to move towards decentralised implementation, approval for project selection, tendering and contracting by Candidate Countries of PHARE and ISPA projects. To help the Candidate Countries prepare for taking on full responsibility and liability for the management of all Community assistance, an Extended Decentralised Implementation System is currently being prepared (EDIS).¹⁷ Under this system, all responsibility for procedural management of EU funds will be passed over to the candidate country’s implementing agencies once a country has set in place the necessary financial accountability systems and the Commission is satisfied that Community funds will be handled appropriately. At this point the Commission’s role will change from ex-anteapproval of projects to that of general monitoring and ex-post evaluation of selected projects.

Implementation of SAPARD has been decentralised from the start of the programme in 2000. Bulgaria was the first country to receive approval for SAPARD implementation. Romania received approval in July 2002.

The final aim of such process is to prepare the Candidate Countries to effectively manage larger funds, such as the Structural and Cohesion funds, under the final monitoring and auditing of the Commission’s services.

The EDIS process is going very slowly for all candidate countries and none have qualified to date. The candidate countries have been set the deadline of the end of 2002 for implementing EDIS. Romania has designed an action plan to meet the EDIS requirements – "Strengthening Institutional and Administrative Capacity to manage EU funds", and this plan has been approved by the Government. According to the Commission’s strategy report 2002 the work on getting this system put in place should be accelerated.¹⁸

Romania has a large task ahead if it is to meet the EDIS criteria. While the EU provides technical assistance and financial support, there are many conditions attached including technical hurdles before the funding can be accessed. This means that Romania has difficulty in absorbing all of the EU’s help. The flexibility of bilateral assistance is invaluable support for Romania to meet the various conditions attached to EU assistance, e.g. preparation of documentation for infrastructure projects.