Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-20-Speech-2-434"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20080520.29.2-434"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Thank you for these very pertinent and important follow-up questions. The Commission is working with Croatia as it would with any other candidate country so that we follow the negotiating framework adopted in unanimity by the Council and by the Member States.
It is our task and responsibility to monitor progress in meeting the benchmarks on the basis of our rather new benchmark methodology, which was created and adopted at the end of 2006 – with very strong support by Parliament – in order to improve the quality of the EU accession process. This means that once a country is able to open one benchmark and then close the same benchmark it has proved that it has made sufficient progress in the issues concerned.
I give you one very concrete example: that is the shipbuilding sector in Croatia. We expect that Croatia will provide a very concrete restructuring strategy for the whole sector, as well as for all the individual shipyards concerned in this sector.
There was a meeting recently between the Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia and my colleague Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition, to scrutinise the state of affairs in this regard. We are still waiting for somewhat more convincing efforts by the Croatian authorities to show that Croatia will be able to restructure its shipbuilding sector properly so that we can move forward in the field of competition policy where state aid is a very critical benchmark.
This is to prove that it really is in the hands of the Croatian Government and the authorities to meet the benchmarks. We always knew that some of the benchmarks were more challenging than others and the Commission has encouraged Croatia to work diligently in order to meet these difficult benchmarks, especially in the area of judiciary reform that Mr Crowley referred to, as well as in the other area I mentioned, the shipbuilding sector.
Concerning judiciary reform, we are providing legal and technical assistance for Croatia under the institution-building part of the instrument for pre-accession. We are encouraging twinning exercises and of course we provide our own expertise for Croatia. Member States are also providing their peer reviews which are important in order to benchmark whether or not Croatia is making good progress in this field.
So all in all, we are doing well overall in the negotiations. The pace of the negotiations essentially depends on the pace of these critical reforms in order for Croatia to meet first the opening and then closing benchmarks."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples