The report is in the final stage of preparation and is expected to be released in the second half of March. Using medical language, the source, who is well acquainted with the work on the report, said that the examination has found no irregularities.

Such an assessment comes as no surprise and could have been inferred from recent statements by Commission officials responsible for enlargement.

In its final report, which will be about 15 pages long, the Commission will focus on 10 areas within the three most difficult chapters of EU legislation - Competition Policy, Judiciary and Fundamental Rights, and Justice, Freedom and Security.

The Commission, in its previous report released last October, identified 10 tasks which Croatia needed to address before its scheduled accession to the European Union on July 1, 2013.

Those issues are: signing a privatisation contract for the Brodosplit shipyard and taking the necessary decisions to find a viable solution for the 3. Maj and Brodotrogir shipyards in order to complete the restructuring of the shipbuilding industry; implementing the short term measures elaborated in September 2012 for increasing the efficiency of the judiciary and reducing the court backlog; adopting the new enforcement legislation in order to ensure the execution of court decisions and reduce the backlog of enforcement cases; establishing the Conflict of Interest Commission so that it starts working; adopting the new law on access to information in order to strengthen the legal and administrative framework in the area of access to information; completing the adoption of related by-laws to ensure the implementation of the police law; completing the construction of border crossing points at the Neum corridor; achieving the established recruitment target for border police for 2012; finalising and adopting the migration strategy with clearly defined measures for the integration of the most vulnerable group of migrants; and increasing the capacity to translate and revise the acquis so that this task can be completed in time for accession.

The head of the Department for Croatia in the Directorate-General for Enlargement, Dirk Lange, said in the second half of January that he expected that Croatia would carry out seven of those tasks before the final monitoring report was out in spring, while the remaining three would be implemented before accession. He identified the remaining three tasks as shipbuilding, the construction of border crossings at Neum and the translation of the acquis communautaire into Croatian.

In the meantime, a contract for the privatisation of the Brodosplit shipyard has been signed, a contract for the Brodotrogir shipyard has been initialled and could be ready for signature very soon, and the Uljanik shipyard has submitted a binding offer for the 3. Maj shipyard and the takeover process should be completed soon. Translation has been speeded up by hiring extra translators and the Commission is pleased with the present pace of the translation work because it guarantees that it will be completed by July 1. Work on the border crossings has also been accelerated and should be competed by March 31.

A positive monitoring report and resolution of the Ljubljanska Banka issue with Slovenian will clear the last obstacles to Croatia's EU entry, making it possible for the remaining EU countries Germany, Denmark and Slovenia to ratify Croatia's EU accession treaty in time for its accession on July 1 as planned.

Croatia is the first EU membership aspirant that has been subjected to a pre-accession monitoring mechanism, which checks a country's compliance with its commitments from the signing of the accession treaty to accession. In that way the EU wants to make sure that a future member is completely ready for membership, so that there would be no need for any post-accession monitoring. The mechanism was introduced to avoid a repetition of previous cases when acceding countries suspended all reforms after signing the accession treaty. Pre-accession monitoring therefore is also a form of pressure that is maintained until accession day.

The Commission has released two of three planned monitoring reports on Croatia since the signing of its accession treaty on December 9, 2011. The first report was made public on April 24, 2012, covering the three most important chapters. The second, comprehensive report was released on October 10, 2012, covering all chapters, while the third and final report, which is due out in the second half of this month, will focus only on the three most important chapters.

March 21 was initially mentioned as a date of publication of the final report, but the Commission source says that the report may be released a few days later.