Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-224"
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"en.20000516.9.2-224"2
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"I can tell the honourable Member that screening – i.e. legislative adjustment – was of course completed with all candidates some time ago. It is updated now and again because the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission are not idle and continue to produce legal acts, meaning that the acquis changes. This amended acquis must, of course, be included in negotiations. But this happens on a regular basis.
The screening process has therefore been completed with all candidates. Your question is based on a misunderstanding. Screening is not the same as negotiation, screening is merely an adjustment process. Screening is used merely to identify the acquis of the European Union and how much of it already forms part of the candidate country’s legislation and how much does not. That has been done.
Now you want to know how far negotiations have proceeded overall. I know that for the Luxembourg group of countries, with which negotiations started in March 1998, between 10 and 15 out of a total of 31 negotiating chapters have been provisionally completed. A few more will be completed during the Portuguese presidency. But more important than the number of chapters completed is probably the number of chapters opened. By the end of the Portuguese presidency, all 29 chapters will be on the negotiating table for the Luxembourg group of countries. Only the chapters entitled “Institutions” and “Miscellaneous” are still closed for obvious reasons. They come at the end.
With the Helsinki group of countries, negotiations did not start until February of this year. Between 5 and 8 chapters will be opened for these countries during the Portuguese presidency. Indeed, I think that we will be able to provisionally close a whole series of chapters by the end of the Portuguese presidency, but we cannot yet forecast how many with any degree of accuracy. In all events, the process is proceeding apace.
It is quite impossible to forecast when the negotiating process will be completed and when the first accessions will take place. There have been intensive discussions on this over recent weeks and months. The Commission stated quite clearly in Helsinki that an accession scenario could not be developed until all the information needed was available. We need to clarify if the Union itself is ready for accession, i.e. if the institutional reforms have been completed, how far negotiations have progressed and, most importantly, and this will be the most difficult exercise at the end, if a candidate country is judged to be in a position to really apply and implement the acquis it has adopted. As things stand today, I am bound to say that we cannot forecast when such a scenario will be ready. I have said on many occasions that I would like it to be ready by the end of this year, at the Nice summit. But whether or not that will be possible will only become apparent in the autumn of this year once we have the up-to-date progress reports on preparations for accession for each individual candidate country."@en1
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