The news this week that only 37 per cent of EU citizens regard enlarging the Union as a priority will come as no surprise to the applicant states in central and eastern Europe as they wait uneasily for a timetable for entry. Officials in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw are acutely aware that, while business leaders in the euro zone view the formerly communist states as tempting investment opportunities and useful sources of cheap labour, western politicians are sounding increasingly shifty on enlargement.

"It is like driving a car that develops a noise. It moves down the road all right but it seems to be making strange sounds. You feel a little anxious," according to Hungary's foreign minister, Mr Janos Martonyi.

All EU member-states say they support enlargement but as the prospect of accession moves closer, its implications - and the potential problems - are becoming clearer. And the closer the applicant states move towards fulfilling the EU's conditions of entry, the less inclined their western neighbours appear to be to embrace them.

"We saw the generosity shown towards countries like Ireland, Portugal and especially Greece, which was in a much less developed condition when it joined the EU than Hungary is today. But there doesn't seem to be much chance that this kind of generosity will be shown to us this time around," said Mr Endre Aczel, Hungary's leading political commentator.

Last month, the EU opened negotiations with the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Poles, the Estonians and the Slovenes on the most difficult question of all - what to do about agriculture.

The applicant states want to receive the entire range of EU agriculture subsidies (which account for half the income of the average EU farmer) on entry but without exposing their agriculture and food industry to the full cost of implementing EU standards.

Farming generates about 9 per cent of GDP in the applicant states, compared to just 2 per cent within the EU and enlargement would add more than 50 per cent to the EU's arable land area while more than doubling the agricultural workforce.

In Poland, where more than two million farms employ over a quarter of the country's workforce, more than 90 per cent of the farms are smaller than the EU average of 16 hectares - itself considered by most experts to be too small to be viable.

If only the top 10 per cent of Polish farms can operate efficiently, the authorities are left with the difficult question of what to do with the rest. More importantly, the loss of almost four million agricultural jobs could create enough social tension to derail Poland's entire bid for EU membership.

The situation is less serious in the Czech Republic and Hungary but an EU study two years ago calculated that increasing agricultural productivity in central and eastern Europe to even half the EU level would put half the region's 10 million farm workers on the dole. Starting in November, the EU will spend €520 million (£409 million) a year on a rural development programme in the applicant states but few analysts believe it will make much difference.

Even if a solution is found to the agriculture problem, the EU can still expect to pay structural funds to all the applicant countries for many years to come. Despite the great advances in prosperity throughout the region, incomes in central and eastern Europe remain extremely low by EU standards.

Faced with such formidable challenges, some EU member-states, including France and Austria, hint that they would be happy to slow down the pace of the enlargement negotiations. France's President Jacques Chirac and Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroder both face elections in 2002 and neither will wish to burden their voters with too many anxieties about the cost of EU enlargement.

Mr Aczel believes that his fellow Hungarians are wrong to feel victimised and ill-treated by the EU because the problem with enlargement has less to do with the applicant states than with the EU itself. "The EU doesn't know what it is. It hasn't got a vision now the Cold War is over. Until it works out its own identity, it will have problems with inviting new members to join," he said.