The call from the President of the EU Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, for the Helsinki summit in December to set target dates for the accession of the front-running states of central and eastern Europe has raised a few eyebrows both in capitals and in the services of the Commission.
Among applicants there has been delight, among member-states a frisson of apprehension, and in the services, questions about what Mr Prodi is playing at.
Disagreements between what might be termed the more technocratic and politically-driven approaches to the issue are fuelling speculation about who will be appointed to head the enlargement directorate under the German Commissioner, Mr Gunther Verheugen.
Decisions about enlargement had always been likely to dominate the summit and its preparations, but the focus had been expected to be somewhat different. Crucially, whether others should be added to the "5 + 1" front-runners - Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, the Czech Republic plus Cyprus - with whom full accession negotiations are already under way. And whether a formula can be found for indicating that Turkey will now be considered an official candidate.
The summit will also consider the closely related issue of the scope of the next treaty-amending Inter-Governmental Conference about which there are now widely differing levels of ambition.
The annual Commission report on state of preparedness for accession of both what are known as the "ins" and the "pre-ins" - Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Malta - is due in the middle of October.
In theory any decision to change the status of applicants should be based on the "objective" findings of the report, but the decision will inevitably be taken in the grey area between objectivity and politics. It will be coloured both by a post-Kosovo desire to give a fillip to those who took serious collateral damage to their economies, and fears that the demoralisation associated with being left in the second rank is actually demotivating the reform process.
A similar logic is pushing the argument to set target dates for accession for the "ins". There is some evidence in Poland and the Czech Republic, for example, of a slowdown in getting to grips with the more intractable and painful reforms as populations become more sceptical about the EU's intentions and of the benefits of membership.
Target date or no target date, recession and slow legislative progress on adopting EU norms have the Czech Republic worried that its bid could be derailed. The country's chief negotiator in Brussels, Mr Pavel Telicka, acknowledged recently to the Economist that the country must overcome a backlash after its early reform efforts soured: "We were beating our chests in the early '90s real hard . . . [but the boasting] was never really justified, was it?"
Insiders say the Commission report is likely to reflect progress in "pre-ins" such as Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia, a clean bill of health for Malta, and concerns that the impetus for reform in some of the "ins" is being lost.
The Czechs, for example, despite a GDP per capita as much as 64 per cent of the EU average, saw GDP decline last year by 2.7 per cent, in part the result of the unwieldy form of privatisation chosen by the government which has contributed to holding up restructuring in many firms.
Or there is Poland, despite its Baltic tiger growth.
The Prime Minister, Mr Jerzy Buzek, told the Sejm two weeks ago that Poland will be ready to join the European Union on December 31st, 2002, the date set by the accession programmes of all the "ins" as the target for completion of the acquis (the putting in place of all EU legal, administrative and regulatory requirements).
MPs were sceptical and criticised Buzek's speech as too general and overblown. The critical reforms of the steel industry, coal mining and agriculture have yet to get under way. And relations with the EU have been soured in recent days by press reports that Warsaw is considering raising tariffs on farm imports.
Mr Buzek notwithstanding, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) warned recently that Poland will not be ready to join the EU sooner than 2006 as a result of a GDP lower than planned (4 to 5 per cent instead of the forecast 6 to 7 per cent), inflation higher than 2 to 2.5 per cent, and difficulties in adapting Polish legislation to EU requirements within the agreed time limit.
Negotiations are moving along. In the Polish case, since September 1998 negotiations on seven of 23 negotiating chapters have been closed. But these are the easy ones. Talks on the environment, agriculture, and free movement have yet to begin.
And member-states like Ireland are careful to distinguish between a target date for accession, which depends to a great extent on the performance of the applicant in honouring its reform undertakings, and a target for the completion of negotiations, a matter over which the 15 have more direct control.
Moreover, once the talks are completed, some fear that it may take up to two years to see accession ratified in all the memberstates. In such circumstances a deal done by the end of 2002 for, say Slovenia, the wealthiest of the CEECs and most ready to join, would be unlikely to result in accession before the beginning of 2005.
That is still too soon for some, most notably the French, who see accession as a threat to the CAP and the budget and have let it be known privately they would prefer no new members taking part in the 2005 discussions of the next budget.
And insiders say that talk of accession dates, while perhaps superficially encouraging to the applicants, begs the question of what sort of accession. The whole issue of sectoral transition periods has yet to be grappled with.
The detail apart, however, there is a growing feeling that leaders at Helsinki will want to go some way to meeting aspirations for a "date" of some kind. And they are thought likely to admit all six "pre-ins" to formal accession negotiations, albeit, in the cases of Romania and Bulgaria, with little prospect of conclusion in the next decade.
