France believes Croatia will complete accession negotiations with the European Union by the end of June, before celebrating its independence anniversary on June 25, a senior French official said in Zagreb on Monday.
Our position is that the negotiations will be completed by June 23 or 24, before the anniversary of Croatia's independence, the official said.
France wants technical and political solutions to be found in the last steps of the Zagreb-Brussels negotiations. Croatia has made a lot of effort in meeting EU membership criteria and deserves to be the Union's 28th member and some chapters, like "Judiciary and Fundamental Rights", were opened late, the official said.
Speaking of monitoring, the official said it was not about controlling but following what had been done, stressing that there would be no monitoring once Croatia joined the EU.
Monitoring during the accession period will refer to Croatia submitting a report on what has been done every three or four months, said the official.
Before signing the accession treaty, Croatia will release a unilateral statement to the effect that difficulties from the past would not pose a hurdle to the accession of other countries to the EU, it was said.
Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Jandrokovic will discuss the completion of Croatia's EU entry talks with his French counterpart Alain Juppe in Paris next week.
By joining the EU, Croatia will be a successfully completed story and a model for other former Yugoslav countries, the French official said.
