France proposed on Thursday that a protection clause on a control mechanism be included in the Accession Treaty with Croatia which would monitor Croatia's progress in meeting its obligations in the period from the closure of the negotiations to actual accession, diplomatic sources said on Thursday.
This proposal was put forward at a meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER), comprised of ambassadors of member states, which was also attended by EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele.
According to the proposal, the European Commission would submit reports to the Council of the European Union every three months on Croatia's progress in meetings its obligations under the Accession Treaty. It is not yet clear what the sanctions would be in case the reports are negative, but one could assume that it would slow down the process of the ratification of the country's Accession Treaty by the EU member states.
About a month ago, Fuele spoke about pre-accession monitoring and the only novelty is that this should be defined in the Accession Treaty.
According to Fuele, the monitoring would represent the continuation of what the Commission is already doing. During the negotiations, the Commission is monitoring the implementation of the obligations in the provisionally closed chapters and now this would continue until Croatia has joined the bloc.
This form of monitoring is entirely different from the one imposed on Bulgaria and Romania, which are still being monitored. When they were admitted to the EU, the two countries were entirely ready for joining and as they had been previously told that they would enter the bloc in 2007, the EU reached a compromise agreement to admit Bulgaria and Romania, but to continue to monitor them even after their admission to see if they were meeting the EU standards in the judiciary, the fight against corruption and organised crime until it is confirmed that their legislation has been entirely adjusted to that of the EU.
The French proposal was backed by several countries, notably Italy, central European countries and Baltic countries.
According to some diplomatic sources, June is a quite possible deadline for the closure of Croatia's EU entry talks, while some claim there is not enough time to wrap up everything by the end of June, but that the negotiations could be closed in July. Countries such as the Netherlands and Great Britain decline to speak about the dates, stressing that everything will depend on the assessment by the European Commission of Croatia's readiness to wrap up the negotiations.
Commissioner Fuele told the ambassadors that the Commission's assessment should not be expected next week, as it needed a little more time to have Zagreb provide additional explanations and materials concerning meeting the benchmarks for the closure of the negotiations.
Fuele was invited to attend the COREPER meeting so that EU foreign ministers, who are scheduled to meet on Monday, could be informed of the state of Croatia's EU entry talks and discuss it during a working dinner.
