EU-Happy Hungarians Vote on Membership

On airwaves and in the streets of Budapest the message is overwhelmingly pro-EU.

Pro-membership commercials bombard television viewers on a daily basis and in Hungary's radio talk shows, the country's imminent membership in the until-now exclusive western European club is topic A.

"I say 'yes' to the European Union, because we've always been European," goes one commercial. "Out history, our culture, out music. We can only protect that when we continue to be a part of Europe."

This Saturday, Hungarians will go to the polls to tell their government what they think of its decision last Dece1mber to join the EU. Observers expect the same majority support for membership seen in referendums in Malta and Slovenia to date.

Hungarians have long been eager to join the EU, but it was only in the late 1990s that the 15-member body began looking at the country as a serious candidate. Between 1998 and 2002, the southeastern European country experienced the economic boom experienced by many other candidate countries as they privatized institutions held by the state under Soviet rule and actively traded with the West.

Roughly 65 percent of the country's trade was with the EU, a hefty portion of that with Germany. Foreign investors began flooding the country, pumping an estimated €911 billion ($982 billion) into Hungary.

Farmers face an uncertain future in the EU

The growth rates and economic euphoria have cooled considerably since then, exposing the slow change made in other sectors of society, like health care and education. Farmers are also wary of membership.

The EU has promised to bring the same agricultural subsidies enjoyed by current members to the new candidates, but only after 10 years. Lack of subsidies combined with stringent new agricultural guidelines will make it difficult for small farms, in particular, to stay above water.

"I grow plums, and that will also be controlled by the EU," said a 56-year-old farmer interviewed by DW-TV. "There won't be any support from the EU, no authorization, nothing."

Even Hungarian politicians, who are almost unanimously in favor of EU accession see the potential future conflict on the agricultural front.

"I think we will need to take a look at this 10-year transition (rule) very soon," said László Vajda, head of the EU section of the country's Ministry of Agriculture, in a DW-TV interview. "Because it means there will be too harsh a divide between the old and new member states."

Seven candidate states - Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia - are scheduled to hold referendums on membership in the coming months. Cyprus, where UN efforts to reunify the two sides of the divided island recently met failure, will not hold a referendum. The southern, Greek two-thirds of the island, the Republic of Cyprus, will sign the accession agreement along with the nine other candidates on April 16 in Athens.