All member-states would have to make sacrifices to reach agreement on Agenda 2000, the German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, told journalists yesterday.
"Everyone has to pay their fair share. It is not possible for one region to take the whole burden," he insisted.
Presenting the programme for the forthcoming German presidency, Mr Fischer stressed the importance to the EU's heavily charged timetable of meeting the March deadline for completing the budget negotiations. In particular, he said, the completion of the budget was crucial for enlargement as soon as possible. Nothing would be solved by postponing the difficult task of reaching agreement, he said.
But Mr Fischer avoided committing himself to the proposed Agenda 2000 budget provisions for the accession countries, insisting that all the elements of the budget debate, on both income and expenditure sides, were on the table for negotiation.
Mr Fischer also emphasised the German concern to see substantial reform of the Common Agricultural Policy ahead of enlargement.
He warned that the German reality was changing. While the governments of the post-war years had a central strategic focus on the development of Europe, there had been "an objective change in the political view of the public that has to be taken account of". Like any other government in Europe, Bonn had now to respect public opinion, he said.
Germany wants to see a reduction in its contribution to the budget, he said, but "will remain a net contributor insofar as its real capacity allows".
Asked by a Portuguese journalist if the Germans were not behaving like a "reverse Robin Hood - taking money from the poor to help the rich" , Mr Fischer responded that "the EU is not Nottingham Forest, and we are not King John".
Mr Fischer also welcomed the Franco-British initiative on European foreign and security policy, pledging that the Germans would produce a substantial report for the June summit in Cologne on the options.
Mr Fischer reiterated Bonn's refusal to set a date for the EU's planned expansion into eastern Europe, but said that, if negotiations went well, a date could be set towards the end of 1999.
He said any target date would have to be meaningful, referring to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's vision that Poland could enter the EU in 2000.
"Does anyone in this room really believe that?" he asked. "Does anyone in Poland believe that? Does even Helmut Kohl still believe that?"
