FRANÇAIS

May 16 , 2003

Growing support in Slovakia, Polish business feel behind with preparations
Lithuania votes in favour with 90%

by Robert Manchin

BUDAPEST - Support of EU accession in Slovakia has continued increasing in late April: 77% of the population are in favour of EU membership. Polish businesses, although highly supporting Poland's EU accession, with 84%, express the feeling to be late in their preparations and adapting to EU legislation. In the Czech Republic the level of support is stable at about 60% in the total population, and currently 83% among likely voters.

SLOVAKIA: The most recent survey conducted by the Institute for Cultural and Public Opinion Research of the National Culture Center (NOC) indicates a continued increase of support in favor of EU accession in Slovakia. 77% of the interviewed Slovakians do support EU membership. This is a slight increase from the 75 percent in the previous month. 41% of the respondents suggest they will definitely take part in the referendum, 28% will rather take part, 13% rather not and 15% will definitely not take part. Only 3% have not made their mind up yet. After a much criticized EU campaign, it remains to be seen if there will be enough Slovaks to vote on the two days referendum, where the 50% threshold has to be reached to validate the expected highly affirmative result.

POLAND: A survey carried out by the Polish Chamber of Commerce (KIG) on a sample of 1,500 companies indicates that 84% of Polish businessmen are in favour of Poland's EU accession. However, a great number of companies haven't started the adjustment process yet, some of them don't even know how to do it and others don't know how to count for the costs, says Marek Kloczko, KIG Secretary General. Intuition and educated guess seem to be of greater use than rational estimations and knowledge, he adds.

Another risk factor coming with insufficient preparation is the compliance with EU regulations. Following the KIG estimates, the majority of Polish business is only half-way through to fullfill EU regulations. Only 10% of the companies seem to be well prepared, another 30% medium. This leaves a great number of enterprises where little has been done yet. The greatest threat may come from new competition in the market, warns Tadeuszc Donocik, President of the Regional Chamber of Commerce in Katovice. And it could well be that even in a year, with the day Poland joins the EU, most companies will still not be prepared. On a scale of four points, Polish companies estimate their general level of adjustment to EU regulations as 1.8, the lowest ratio of all candidate countries, where similar surveys had been carried out.

THE CZECH REPUBLIC: TNS's weekly track show no major movements in the public opinion of the country: a stable 60% support the accession to the EU. According to TNS the turnout would be about 60% if the referendum would be held right now, with an overwhelming 83% voting for the Czech EU membership. The voters report a slight increase in the level of information about the EU, now more than half of the Czech feel they have enough information to make a good decision. At the same time, 40% claim that there isn't enough information, and 49% feel that the government "pushes" the citizens to vote for the accession.

LITHUANIA: Lithuanians say "yes" to Europe: 90 percent of the electorate have voted in favour of EU accession at the referendum held on 10-11 May. After the dramatic moments during the weekend when it seemed that the turnout would be less than required, the referendum eventually had 63% of Lithuanian eligible voters participating, and only 9 percent voted against the European Union membership. 'Lithuania has woken up in the European Union this morning' the largest national daily published its Monday issue with this headline after the referendum.