Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-16-Speech-3-011-000"
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"en.20110216.4.3-011-000"2
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"Mr President, I would like to congratulate the rapporteur on Croatia, Mr Hannes Swoboda, and express my appreciation for his fair and balanced report. It acknowledges the impressive progress achieved by Croatia in meeting the criteria for accession, while recognising the efforts that are still necessary to conclude the negotiations.
Along with your rapporteur, Mr Swoboda, I firmly believe that the citizens of Croatia, after being called upon to endorse their country’s accession to the European Union, will be able to vote for their representatives in the next elections to the European Parliament.
The European Union and Croatia have provisionally closed 28 of the 35 negotiating chapters. The ministerial accession conference of 19 April should be able to provisionally close additional chapters where Croatia has either fulfilled, or is very close to fulfilling, the closing benchmarks. As noted by the December 2010 General Affairs Council, the conclusion of negotiations is within reach.
As with all negotiations, the most difficult issues remain to be tackled in the final phase. As Minister Martonyi has just underlined, the Hungarian Presidency announced earlier its goal to finish negotiations in the first half of 2011, if all criteria and benchmarks are fulfilled. This is an ambitious goal which can only be achieved if Croatia continues to make an exceptional effort to fulfil the remaining requirements in time.
The main outstanding challenges are the closing benchmarks for Chapter 23: Judiciary and fundamental rights and Chapter 8: Competition policy. Croatia has been working hard in both areas, but now is the time to go the final mile.
As regards the judiciary and fundamental rights, the main areas where Croatia is called upon to deliver on its commitments are: establishing a credible and sustainable track-record in the fight against corruption; strengthening the independence, accountability, impartiality and professionalism of the judiciary; addressing the issue of impunity for war crimes; meeting targets in the Housing Care Programme for refugees and improving the implementation of minority rights. Full cooperation with ICTY remains a requirement.
In each of these areas, there are clear benchmarks to be met. The Commission is currently taking stock of the progress achieved by Croatia for each of the benchmarks, on which we will report in our upcoming interim report on this chapter due by the middle of March.
I had a very useful and constructive meeting with Prime Minister Kosor yesterday. We discussed the importance of maintaining the momentum of the accession negotiations and of tackling the remaining outstanding issues. The Croatian authorities are well aware of what they still need to do. Indeed, I was very pleased to be reassured of the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to ensuring that the work continues at full speed until the European Union accession process can be concluded.
I could not agree more with those who call on the European Union neither to make ‘special discounts’ nor to impose artificial hurdles on Croatia. The principles of full respect for the conditionality that applies to the candidate countries, and full respect for the commitments that the European Union has made, remain the cornerstones of the enlargement process. This is the essence of its credibility.
The Commission will continue to give its full support to Croatia, which is working hard to achieve its goal of accession to the European Union. I am sure, and here I am following the line of Minister Martonyi, that the Member States will decide that accession negotiations can be concluded as soon as we can ascertain that the remaining closing benchmarks have been met. I am equally sure that, when Parliament is requested to give its consent on the draft Accession Treaty, it will play this critical role in accordance with the very constructive approach that it has shown with regard to Croatia’s accession process."@en1
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