European Union countries on Thursday approved the closing of two chapters in accession negotiations with Croatia which, after an accession conference in Brussels next Monday, will have closed more than half the negotiation chapters, according to diplomatic sources.
COREPER, the committee comprising EU countries' ambassadors, greenlightedthe closing of the chapters "Right of Establishment and Freedom to ProvideServices" and "Social Policy and Employment".
Croatia will wrap up this year with 28 negotiation chapters opened and 17closed. Croatia is negotiating 33 of the 35 chapters of the European acquiscommunautaire. The excluded chapters are "Institutions" and"Other Issues".
Croatia is expected to wrap up the EU accession talks in the first half of2010. Sixteen chapters still need to be closed, including five that have notbeen opened yet.
The "Judiciary and Fundamental Rights" chapter, the opening ofwhich is related to artillery logbooks sought by the Hague war crimes tribunal,and the "Market Competition" chapter, which is related to statesupport to shipyards, should be opened next year.
Three chapters are technically ready for opening -- "Foreign, Securityand Defence Policy", "Environment" and "Fisheries" --but cannot be due to Slovenia's objections.
Asked about the reasons for the objections, Slovenian representatives havesaid the chapters are being worked on and could be ready early next year.Foreign Minister Samuel Zbogar said earlier this month there would not beenough time before the December 21 accession conference for the Sloveniangovernment and parliament to carry out all the necessary procedures. He saidSlovenian ministries were examining the substance of those chapters and seekingsolutions, but nothing was said about the objections.
The Brussels weekly European Voice released on its front page today thearticle "Slovenia finds new ways to block Croatia's EU bid".
"Slovenia held up the EU's talks with Croatia for most of 2009 over anunresolved border dispute and allowed negotiations to resume only in October,after the two countries agreed to submit the dispute to internationalarbitration," said the article.
"But despite the agreement that bilateral questions should not furtherdelay Croatia's accession bid, Slovenia is again obstructing the membershipnegotiations," it added.
According to the story, Zbogar declared on December 8 that his governmenthad "reservations" about the substance of the three chapters above,two days after the EU decided that the seat of the new Agency for theCooperation of Energy Regulators will be in Ljubljana.
In early July, a senior official of EU president Sweden said on condition ofanonymity that Slovenia could forget the ACER seat as long as it vetoedCroatia's EU talks.
European Voice also said the remaining EU countries, including Sweden, hadfailed to obtain an explanation from Slovenia's authorities for their lack ofconsent to the opening of those three chapters.
