EU/Kroatien — Tenth meeting of the Accession Conference at Deputy level with Croatia

Brus­sels, 19 April 2010
The tenth meet­ing of the Acces­sion Con­fer­ence with Croa­t­ia at Deputy lev­el was held today in Brus­sels, fol­low­ing the start of nego­ti­a­tions on 3 Octo­ber 2005. Based on the posi­tions of the Par­ties, the Con­fer­ence was able to pro­vi­sion­al­ly close Chap­ter 1 — Free move­ment of goods, which is key for the inter­nal mar­ket, to bring down bar­ri­ers, to cre­ate more jobs and increase over­all pros­per­i­ty.

The nego­ti­a­tions on Chap­ter 1 — Free move­ment of goods were opened on 25 July 2008 at an Acces­sion Con­fer­ence at Deputy lev­el. At this meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence the EU not­ed that, in order for the chap­ter to be pro­vi­sion­al­ly closed, Croa­t­ia would have, inter alia, to trans­pose the rel­e­vant aquis into Croa­t­ian law, in par­tic­u­lar on the com­mu­ni­ty code relat­ing to med­i­c­i­nal prod­ucts for human use as well as on the pric­ing and reim­burse­ment of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, and to demon­strate that it has the ade­quate admin­is­tra­tive capac­i­ty to prop­er­ly imple­ment and enforce the leg­is­la­tion in all hor­i­zon­tal areas affect­ing the free move­ment of goods.

The EU and Croa­t­ia also con­sid­ered pro­pos­als for tran­si­tion­al arrange­ments con­cern­ing the com­mu­ni­ty code relat­ing to med­i­c­i­nal prod­ucts for human use, as amend­ed, in rela­tion to the upgrad­ing of mar­ket­ing autho­ri­sa­tions and doc­u­men­ta­tion for med­i­c­i­nal prod­ucts reg­is­tered in Croatia.

Today, on the basis of the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Croa­t­ia and the con­sid­er­able progress made in prepa­ra­tions in all areas under this chap­ter, the EU not­ed that the require­ments of the clos­ing bench­marks are con­sid­ered ful­filled and that, at this stage, this chap­ter does not require fur­ther negotiations.

The Euro­pean Union also under­lined that it would devote par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to mon­i­tor­ing all spe­cif­ic issues men­tioned in its com­mon posi­tion with a view to ensur­ing Croatia’s admin­is­tra­tive capac­i­ty to imple­ment the leg­is­la­tion in the field of free move­ment of goods.

The EU will, if nec­es­sary, return to this chap­ter at an appro­pri­ate moment.

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Since the start of the nego­ti­a­tions, thir­ty chap­ters have been opened, of which eigh­teen have been pro­vi­sion­al­ly closed. Fur­ther Acces­sion Con­fer­ences will be planned, as appro­pri­ate, in order to take the process forward. 

Source:
Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Union