"We wanted to warn the government, so that it better prepare its projects so as to be better able to benefit from three times more environmental aid than available so far," Wallstroem, the EU's Environmental Commissioner, said in an interview in the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita.

Poland has so far only used 1.5 percent of the 692 million eurosmillion dollars) earmarked for it under the EU's ISPA aid programme, which is designed to help bring candidate countries up to scratch in the environment and transport sectors.

Wallstroem, who met Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller on Monday, stressed: "Brussels says the same thing to all the candidates: you have to increase your capacity to use EU aid."

She said that among the reasons for the delays were "an insuffient number of experts, bad organisation of work, and unclear competences of the civil servants," along with low salaries which make civil servants abandon the public for the private sector.

TERRA.WIRE