Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-20-Speech-2-431"
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"en.20080520.29.2-431"2
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"Madam President, Mr Posselt, Mr Crowley and Mr Ebner have all asked about the state of play of accession negotiations with Croatia and I can respond to them jointly.
These negotiations with Croatia are progressing well overall. So far negotiations have been opened on 18 chapters out of 35 and we have closed two of these chapters. As regards opening benchmarks, 11 sets of benchmarks have been set. The Commission has assessed the benchmarks as being met in seven of these 11 cases. In these cases our recommendations are now under discussion among the Member States in the Council or negotiation positions are being prepared. In the remaining chapters, such as competition policy and public procurement, opening benchmarks were already set by the Union in the first half of 2006 – that is two years ago. But Croatia has been slow in taking the necessary measures to meet these opening benchmarks.
Croatia is still working on opening benchmarks for the chapter on the judiciary and fundamental rights, where there are many difficult challenges in areas such as judicial reform, the fight against corruption and refugee return.
While Croatia has done plenty of good work aligning with the key 16 chapters where we have closing benchmarks, Croatia has not done enough at this stage to meet all closing benchmarks in any of these 16 chapters. With the remaining conditions still to be met by Croatia it unrealistic to assume that accession negotiations could be concluded this year in 2008. Croatia has nonetheless made good progress overall and therefore 2008 could be a decisive year in Croatia’s EU accession negotiations. Provided a number of conditions are met by Croatia, the Commission will in this autumn’s enlargement package present an indicative timetable or a conditional roadmap for the conclusion of other technical negotiations in the course of 2009.
The first condition to be met is that Croatia should meet all opening benchmarks by June this year, i.e. next month. Secondly, Croatia must comply with all legal obligations under the stabilisation and accession agreement and it must also continue to comply with the general conditionalities of the stabilisation and accession process. And thirdly, Croatia needs urgently to improve its management of EU financial assistance under the PHARE and IPA programmes.
The President of the Commission will continue to provide substantial financial and technical assistance for Croatia in order to help it fulfil the requirements of EU membership. Once sufficient progress has been made by Croatia in meeting opening or closing benchmarks, the Commission will prepare and submit in good time the necessary recommendations to the Member States for the positions to be taken in the intergovernmental conference. So, in a nutshell, ultimately the pace of progress of Croatia towards the European Union will be determined by its own ability to meet all necessary conditions. Thus we can work and progress on the basis of Croatia’s own merits."@en1
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