The EU and Croatia has reached an agreement on two more chapters during the twelfth meeting of the Accession Conference with Croatia at Ministerial level which was held on 19 of April in Brussels. With these two, there are provisionally close 30 of 35 chapters opened in October 2005. In particular, these chapters, chapter 11 -Agriculture and rural development- and Chapter 22 -Regional policy and coordination of structural instruments-, are key for preparing future negotiations.

These two key chapters for European integration are highly significant both in terms of their policy and budgetary impact  (they mean 70-75% of the overall EU budget). These are always the key subjects for each and every accession negotiation. They also required a very sizeable amount of preparatory work and EU will be monitoring such work. Further Accession Conferences are planned this semester with a view to finalise accession negotiations.

However, the toughest part is yet to come, according the Hungarian presidency, in order to close negotiations in June, agreement must be reached on five additional chapters: competition policy; fisheries; judiciary and fundamental rights; financial and budgetary provisions, and other issues. Especially chapters Nº 8 on competition policy, and Nº 23 on judiciary and fundamental rights. Competition policy and judiciary and fundamental rights, required much effort from Croatia side. In the case of the former, the privatisation of state-owned ship factories must be brought in harmony with the EU regulations on state aid, while in the case of the latter achievements must be demonstrated concerning several performance-measurement benchmarks.

Fishery is also one of the difficult negotiation subjects. On this chapter Zagreb has already met the conditions, but it is still negotiating with the Commission on certain provisional exemptions. Croatia and Slovenia are also negotiating on the issue of historical fishing rights.

Croatia must continue its reform efforts, particularly in key areas such as judiciary, the fight against corruption and organised crime, and prosecution of war crimes, to build up a convincing track record in these areas, according to the body in charge of controlling the implementation of the EU-Croatia Stability and Association Agreement signed in 2001. Moreover, the Stabilisation and Association Council now concludes that the closing of the negotiations is within reach.