At an intergovernmental accession conference in Brussels on Tuesday, Croatia closed two more policy areas in its talks on accession to the European Union, which leaves it with one-third of all policy areas to be closed before the completion of the talks.
The two policy areas (so-called chapters) closed on Tuesday are Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Policy, and Financial Control. With these two chapters, Croatia now has 22 closed chapters of the 33 that are negotiated.
"We still have a lot of work to do, but today we have done a big job. We closed two chapters which are very important, particularly chapter No. 12 on Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Policy, a very complex area that is important not only for the pace of the talks, but also for Croatian citizens because its closing means that Croatia has achieved the highest European food safety and phytosanitary standards," said Vladimir Drobnjak, Croatia's chief negotiator in the talks with the EU.
He said that Croatia was now focusing on meeting benchmarks (additional criteria) for the two most difficult policy areas - Judiciary and Fundamental Rights, and Competition Policy - since great progress had already been made in other chapters and work on most of them was nearing completion.
When asked if it would be easier to meet benchmarks for the policy area No. 23 - Judiciary and Fundamental Rights - now that the Hague war crimes tribunal had ruled that it was impossible to establish with certainty that military documents sought by the prosecution in the trial of three Croatian generals existed, Drobnjak said that Croatia remained strongly committed to full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, which was only one of the additional criteria in that policy area.
The Belgian EU Presidency confirmed on Tuesday that the next intergovernmental accession conference with Croatia would be held in early November.
Croatia has already submitted benchmarks for the closing of the policy chapters Transport Policy and Free Movement of Capital, in the next few days it will submit benchmarks for the chapter Environment, and it will soon do so for the chapter Fisheries. These four chapters are expected to be closed at the next accession conference, and it is possible that talks on the chapters Justice, Freedom and Security, and Foreign, Security and Defence Policy could be closed then as well.
If that happens, the chapters Agriculture and Rural Development; Regional Policy and the Coordination of Structural Instruments; and Finance and Budgetary Provisions would remain to be closed in December, while the remaining two chapters - Judiciary and Fundamental Rights and Competition Policy - could be closed early next year.
This would enable the technical completion of Croatia's EU entry talks before the EU summit scheduled for March 2011 and the signing of an accession treaty before the end of the Hungarian EU presidency in the first half of 2011.
