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Hungary on fast track

for EU widening,

Santer says

BUDAPEST :EU Commission President Jacques Santer said on Friday that Hungary was well on the way to joining the EU and suggested it could be part of a first group in accession talks.

"We are leaving Hungary with the firm conviction that it intends to proceed on the path that it has chosen," Santer said after talks with President Arpad Goncz, Prime Minister Gyula Horn, Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs and members of parliament.

Santer at a news conference stopped short of saying which of the dozen countries petitioning to join the EU would be the first to enter negotiations, but strongly hinted that Hungary, as is widely expected, would be among them.

"I don't think that all the candidates can participate in the first round (of talks)," Santer said. "Each applicant will have to be judged on the merits."

Santer, who flew to Hungary after a one-day visit on Thursday to the Czech Republic, made similar statements there, suggesting that the two central European countries are on the fast track for EU membership.

"It is not always that we find such consensus with regard to accession to the union," Santer said at a joint news conference with Horn at Hungary's ornate Parliament building on the banks of the Danube.

"If this is supported by all the Hungarian citizens it will be able to work towards an architecture of the 21st century in Europe in which Hungary will be included."

Horn said he also backed a "differentiated approach" for the EU to hold talks with the countries that want to join.

Santer, saying "I am not a prophet", declined to give any firm date for the start of the talks but said it could be as early as the beginning of 1998, after a key EU conference ends.

He said the EU intergovernmental conference, which began last week in Turin, Italy, should last about a year.

Santer, who later flew to Brussels, said Hungary still needed to complete an extensive questionnaire which it will receive later this month and which has to be filled out by all applicant countries.

Horn said Hungary was proceeding with additional reforms needed to meet EU requirements, but said that by the end of 1997 "90 percent of EU regulations would be adopted by the Hungarian system".

He said Hungary would abolish next year an eight percent additional import duty that was imposed as part of an economic reform package.-Reuter