Eu Undergoes Growing Pains

Having set aside their differences about how to achieve a common currency, the leaders of the European Union tangled Tuesday over another problem they will have to solve in the next few years: how to continue sharing power once they open up their club to new member states from Central Europe.

The 15-nation European Union is unlikely to be in a position to admit new countries until around the middle of the next decade, according to officials here, putting the group far behind the U.S.-led NATO alliance, which plans to admit at least three formerly Communist Central European countries by 1999.

The larger members, such as France and Germany, say the system must change or it will become unwieldy if the group is enlarged to, say, 20 members. But the smaller European countries like Belgium and Luxembourg fear that any change in the way they vote could leave them overwhelmed by the larger countries. The result has been an impasse that left the 15 leaders enmeshed in marathon talks Tuesday night to try to agree on a new system.