The head of the national committee monitoring EU accession negotiations, Vesna Pusic, said in parliament on Wednesday that Croatia should open the remaining three policy chapters by July and close four or five chapters in the autumn if it was to complete the negotiations this year.
Croatia should open negotiations on competition policy, judiciary and fundamental rights, and foreign, security and defence policy by the end of the Spanish EU presidency on June 30, and should leave four or five chapters for closure in the autumn, so that negotiations can be completed by the end of the year and an accession treaty signed early next year. That will be followed by a referendum on EU membership in Croatia and the process of ratification of the accession treaty by the parliaments of the EU members, Pusic said while presenting a report on the committee's work from July 1 to 31 December last year.
The report says that considerable progress has been made since EU member Slovenia partly lifted its veto from negotiations.
By December 31, 2009 Croatia had provisionally closed 17 chapters (15 chapters with closing benchmarks and two without them), while negotiations had begun on an additional 11 chapters with closing benchmarks. Negotiations had not yet begun on five chapters (Croatia has submitted its negotiation positions for three of the chapters, because the European Commission has not yet invited Zagreb to submit its positions for the remaining two).
Pusic stressed the need for the government to intensify communication with the public and explain what requests Croatia had made and which of them had been granted.
Commenting on discussions on whether Brussels was demanding bankruptcy or liquidation of the state-owned shipyards if the second round of bids for their privatisation failed, Pusic said that the official documents only mentioned bankruptcy proceedings.
