Box: The Roadmap

• Luxembourg group: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia. According to the timetable, revised EU positions on agriculture should have been achieved during the second half of 2001. These revised positions are not intended to address important and sensitive questions such as direct payments or quotas that have a major impact on the EU’s budget, which are likely to be addressed during the first half of 2002. The EU should be in a position to close the negotiations with the most advanced countries, that is, those fulfilling all criteria for membership, during 2002, thereby enabling the EU to welcome new member states from the end of 2002.

• Helsinki group: Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, and Slovakia. The European Commission endorses the principle of differentiation and welcomes the opportunity for each candidate country, particularly those within this group, to catch up in the negotiations. It recommends that the countries within the Helsinki group prepare their position papers on those chapters where they consider themselves prepared for negotiation, taking into account their state of preparation and the timetable proposed. It is on this basis that the Commission will assess whether it can recommend the opening of these chapters to negotiation.

According to the roadmap, the EU will need to define common positions on a last group of chapters during the first part of 2002: agriculture, regional policy, financial and budgetary provisions, institutions and "other."