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Brussels, 5 March 1998
CYPRUS could be excluded from the launch of accession negotiations at the end of this month if the Greek Cypriot government does not show sufficient flexibility in allowing Turkish Cypriots to take part in the talks, warn EU insiders.
“If it turns out that President Glafcos Clerides is standing in the way of a compromise, he can kiss the start of accession negotiations goodbye,” said one Union diplomat. “We only have two sources of leverage to get the peace process back on track: the start of talks and treaty ratification. If we abandon the first point now, we will have no more leverage for another three years.”
The warning came as Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek embarked on one of the toughest diplo-matic challenges of his time in office.
During a three-day visit, alongside UK presidency representative David Hannay, he will attempt to broker a deal to involve both northern and southern Cypriots in EU accession negotiations.
At first glance, however, the mission appears doomed. Despite indications by the Greek Cypriots that they would allow representatives from the other community on the divided island into talks, their conditions appear unacceptable to the northern Turkish Cypriot leadership, which in any case says it does not want to take part at all.
The rise of illegal migration to Greece is prompting calls for more EU funding, writes Judith Crosbie.
With financial institutions being shaken by poor trading performance and bad debts, is there anything that private investors can do to protect their money? Stuart Langridge looks for clues at the plight of Northern Rock.
Brussels, 26 February 1998
EUROPE's banks have vowed to fight any move to widen existing EU rules which would force them to denounce suspected tax evasion by customers.
The European Banking Federation claims Union officials are contemplating broadening the scope of an existing directive which compels banks to alert national authorities to evidence of the laundering of proceeds from drug dealing, to cover suspected fiscal fraud by customers.
Its members' hostility to the idea stems from their belief that it would not work in practice, and would merely serve to damage their relationship with customers.
A spokeswoman for Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti confirmed this week that a report due out next month on the workings of the current directive was likely to suggest extending the obligation to declare suspicious transactions to other professions, such as lawyers.
She added that there was “big pressure” from member states and the European Parliament to extend the scope of the directive to bring in other crimes, but stressed that the Commission had not taken any decision.
Pressure for a European initiative follows tentative national moves to use banks to clamp down on fiscal fraud.
Brussels, 19 February 1998
THE EU police agency Europol will not be fully operational before the end of the century even if the political obstacles now hampering its work are removed.
The agency's chief Juergen Storbeck admitted this week that the vast computer database which will form the centrepiece of the agency's crime-fighting capacity would not be fully online before the year 2000 because of technical problems.
Storbeck said law enforcement agencies would therefore not be able to gain instant and automatic access to personal information held in the system's archives before the turn of the century. Until then, they will have to retrieve the information they need through personnel at the organisation's headquarters in The Hague.
“The database will be a semi-automatic system until the year 2000,” Storbeck told European Voice, adding: “We will have everything ready after then.”
Europol should have been up and running almost a year ago, but national parliaments have taken far longer than anticipated to ratify the convention which will allow the agency to carry out all the tasks allotted to it.
The latest delay is a major setback for Europol as this rapid access to data is precisely what EU member states want to enable them to tackle cross-border crime more effectively.
