The first cracks in the European Union's eastwards expansion project appeared yesterday as Austria's gulf with its EU partners widened over the former communist countries' Soviet-era nuclear reactors. At what was expected to be a routine technical meeting between negotiators from the EU and six front-tier candidate countries, Austria vetoed the start of talks on energy, holding out for guarantees of state of the art standards for the plants, some of which lie only tens of kilometres from its border. Negotiators from the candidate countries expressed concern, if not panic, at the first hiccup since membership talks were launched more than 18 months ago.