Hahn Kickstarts Macedonia’s EU Screening Process
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| Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev [right] accepts the European Commission report from EU commissioner Johannes Hahn [left] in April 2018. Photo: EPA-EFE/NAKE BATEV |
Macedonia this week is starting the technical screening process to assess its readiness for EU accession talks, which, according to plan, could start in June next year.
On his arrival on Skopje on Tuesday, Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn will meet Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, Parliament Speaker Talat Xhaferi and the main opposition VMRO DPMNE party leader Hristijan Mickovski.
The screening process will oblige Macedonia to mobilise all its capacities to fulfil the EU preconditions for the formal launch of accession talks.
In late June, European ministers gave a conditional “green light” to the start of the EU accession talks for both Macedonia and Albania.
The two countries were given several key conditions, however, including completion of judicial reforms, active investigations into and verdicts in high-level corruption cases, reforms to the intelligence and security sectors and public administration reform.
One of Macedonia’s first obligations will be to reveal the head of the national team in charge of the political part of the talks as well as the head of team of experts that will be in charge of the technical aspect of the talks with the EU.
It is expected that the hardest part of the screening process, and of the eventual EU accession talks, will be reforms to the judiciary, which Brussels previously assessed as lacking.
The judiciary “is the part of the system about which the country has received the most serious criticism in the past”, political analyst Xelal Neziri told Radio Free Europe on Monday.
“This will be a longer process whose aim would also be inclusion of all the political factors in Macedonia, especially the opposition,” he added. [The opposition opposes the recent crucial deal with Greece over its name.
“The hardest part will be aligning the values of the country with that of the EU,” he continued.
Macedonia’s government has said that in the transition process from EU candidate to accession country, it will draw on the experience of nearby countries like Croatia, which is already an EU member, and of Montenegro and Serbia, which have already launched their accession talks.
Assessments suggest that Macedonia will need to form some 33 working groups for the 33 EU chapters and mobilise more than 1,000 representatives and experts from all fields for the purposes of the talks.
Macedonia’s Vice Prime Minister in charge of European Affairs, Bujar Osmani, says the government sector for European Affairs, SEP, is up to the historic task of being the central hub for coordination of the talks and the institutional reforms.
“This institution is fully prepared. Some SEP experts have spent their entire working careers on this topic, investing diligently and professionally in [building] their capacities and in the process. The SEP will play the role of a central hub that connects and coordinates the entire process,” Osmani told BIRN last week.
Osmani rests his optimism on the fact that Macedonia has been a candidate country for a long time, since 2005, and has since received nine positive European Commission progress reports that were not put into effect only because of the long-standing dispute with Greece.
Macedonia obtained a conditional green light for EU and NATO membership after signing a historic deal with Greece, ending a 27-year dispute over Macedonia’s name, on June 17.
Under the agreement, Macedonia will change its name to the Republic of North Macedonia in order to make it distinct from the northern Greek province, also called Macedonia.
In return, Greece lifted its long-standing blockade of its neighbour’s Euro-Atlantic accession bids.
But the key test for the government in Skopje is the referendum on the “name” deal, which is due to take place this autumn. It that suceeds, Skopje can more or less be sure that there will be no more major obstacles imposed by other countries on its Euro-Atlantic path.
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