Foreign and European Affairs Minister Vesna Pusic called on MPs on Thursday to support the annual plan for the alignment of Croatian legislation with that of the European Union.
The plan provides for the alignment of 108 laws with the acquis communautaire this year, and Pusic said that many of them were a prerequisite for the functioning of Croatia as a full member of the EU.
Ninety-two laws should be passed in the first quarter of the year, nine in the second quarter, three in the third and four in the last quarter. Pusic said that this disproportion in the number of laws per quarter was due to the need to first pass those laws that ensure the application of EU directives as soon as Croatia joins the bloc on July 1.
Pusic noted that the acquis was constantly changing and that Croatia would continue adjusting its legislation to it.
The 108 laws are divided into two groups. One includes laws that transpose EU directives in line with commitments from accession negotiations, while the other includes laws that ensure technical preconditions for the implementation of EU regulations.
The European Commission is due to release its final monitoring report in late March, and Pusic said that Croatia had fulfilled all ten requirements that were identified in the previous report.
The legislative alignment program for 2013 represents a gradual transition from a classic pre-accession program to a plan for the transposition of the acquis communautaire into national legislation, and with this approach Croatia clearly shows its readiness that already now it is functioning as a member state, the government said in its proposal.
