The European Commission will recommend next week that 10 candidate countries should join the European Union in 2004 but will propose no date for Turkey to start accession talks.
The 10 are Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta. The EU executive will propose a target date of 2007 for Romania and Bulgaria to join the bloc, an EU source said.
He said the commission's regular report on the aspirants, due out next Wednesday, would call for strict monitoring of candidates' implementation of EU law after entry talks end in December and the treaty is signed next April.
The commission will seek the power to impose safeguard measures to protect the markets of member states in the first two or three years of membership if accession distorts the EU's internal market for some products, the source said.
Despite strong US pressure, the commission would not recommend giving Turkey a date for starting entry talks because it still met neither the economic nor the human rights criteria but it would offer Ankara more aid, the source said.
He also said the report would make no distinction between Cyprus and the other front-ranking candidates despite the absence of a peace accord to reunite the island.