Opinion polls periodically conducted by GfK Hungaria, a market research group owned by GfK Germany, paint a more mixed picture. On the one hand, even in countries with a devout following of EU accession, such as Romania, support for integration has declined this year. Support in Hungary and Poland, on the other hand, picked up. Yet, the EU can't seem to get its act together. According to the Danish paper, Berlingske Tidende, Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, rules out a "take it or leave it" ultimatum to the candidates. There will be "real negotiations", he insisted. Not so, says Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish president of the EU until Dec 31: "The room for maneuver in negotiations will be very limited ... We have a certain framework, and we stick to it." Yet, disenchantment should not be exaggerated. Naturally, flood-affected farmers throughout the region - from the Czech Republic to Poland - are vigorously protesting their unequal treatment and the compromises their governments are arm-twisted into making. Still, according to a survey released last December by the European Commission, 60 percent of the denizens of the accession countries support it. As the endgame nears, the parties to the negotiations are posturing, though. EU enlargement commissioner, Gunter Verheugen, argued a fortnight ago against equalizing support for Poland's 6 million farmers with the subsidies given to the EU's 8 million smallholders. In a typical feat of incongruity he said it will prevent them from modernizing and alienate other professions. Franz Fischler, the Austrian EU's agriculture commissioner, hinted that miserly production quotas for cereals, meat and dairy products, offered by the EU to the seething applicants, can be augmented. The EU presently provides the candidate countries with funding, within the Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD) to support farm investments, to boost processing and marketing of farm and fishery products and to bankroll infrastructure improvements. Hungarian farmers, for instance, are entitled to up to $38 million of SAPARD money annually. In a thinly veiled threat, Fischler included this in a speech he made in a recent official visit to Estonia: "The EU enlargement countries should be pleased with the 25 per cent agriculture subsidies, as the member states have not agreed even on that yet, therefore this should be the first goal and only after that can further subsidies be discussed ... It would not be very wise to tell the EU member states that accession countries are not pleased, that would not be positive for the whole process."