March 30, 1997 was an important date for the Czech Republic as it was selected along with five other candidates to begin accession negotiations with the EU. It is as of yet unknown how long these negotiations will take. In other words, a date for the first eastward enlargement of the EU has not yet been set. A milestone in the Czech Republic's progress towards EU membership was the EU Summit in the French resort of Nice that took place from the 7th to the 11th December 2000. Debate was long, complex and sometimes fraught, making it the longest summit in EU history, but leaders agreed on a package of internal reforms to prepare the Union for admitting up to twelve further members. It was agreed that in future each EU member country will appoint one member of the executive Commission, and that the biggest five EU members will give up their second seat on the executive in 2005. Most observers agree that, in practice, the influence of the Commission will be reduced. EU leaders also decided how many votes all the current and future members will have on the EU's legislative body, the Council of Ministers: France, Germany, Britain and Italy will have 29, Spain and Poland 27 (initially the EU proposed fewer votes for Poland than for Spain, which has a similar population, but Germany rallied behind Poland's claim that anything less than full parity would be unfair), Romania 15, The Netherlands 13, Greece, The Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary and Portugal 12, Sweden, Bulgaria and Austria 10, Slovakia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Lithuania 7, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Cyprus and Luxembourg 4, and Malta 3. This new distribution greatly reinforces the influence of the biggest Union members, which had been afraid of losing some of their weight, amid the growing combined voting power of the smaller countries in an expanded Europe. The summit also outlined certain changes to the way important EU agreements are reached, reforming outdated processes that were designed for a far smaller Union. In some areas member countries have agreed to abandon their right of veto, and many decisions will in future be taken using a complex method known as 'qualified majority voting', which EU leaders hope will prevent the decision-making process grinding to a halt in a larger Europe as individual countries try to block initiatives. The reforms weaken the influence of the smaller EU members, which is not necessarily good news for a country the size of the Czech Republic, but - with a degree of reserve - Czech politicians have broadly welcomed the Nice Treaty.