Croatia says it will do ‘whatever it takes’ to join EU in 2010

Croatia’s foreign minister Gordan Jandrokovi? said he was confident that his country would meet the June deadline for the completion of 11 pre-negotiation ‘benchmarks’ set by Brussels as a condition for opening accession talks.

Speaking at a press conference with Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn on Tuesday (7 April), Jandrovi? said 2008 was a “crucial year in terms of the efforts needed to meet the criteria for membership”. He hoped to complete two more benchmark chapters by the end of April and the rest by the end of the Slovenian EU Presidency. 

Revealing that negotiations with Croatia have been “advancing well”, Rehn expressed his confidence that the country would join the EU in 2010 provided that it met all the benchmarks by June 2008. 

“Croatia has good prospects of progress but also plenty of work ahead, particularly on judicial and public administration reform and in the fight against corruption,” said Rehn. 

“I hope that Croatia will soon be able to meet the outstanding benchmarks in the negotiations so that some of the more difficult chapters, such as competition policy and public procurement, can be opened,” the commissioner said. If the country misses this year’s June deadline, Rehn warned that the technical timetable for the conclusion of negotiations in 2009 would become “almost impossible to achieve”. 

“It will be hard work but I believe we will be ready by 2010,” Jandrokovic replied. “We are ready to do it and we will do it.” 

Speaking at a conference in Brussels, Matjaž Šinkovec, the Slovenian state secretary at the foreign ministry, also spoke in favour of Croatia’s possible future accession. However, he urged Zagreb to “proceed faster” towards meeting the necessary entry criteria. 

Another panelist, German MEP Ingo Friedrich, member of the Parliament’s EP-ED group, also voiced support for Croatia’s accession, telling the audience that after the decision at last week’s NATO Summit in Bucharest to grant membership to Croatia, “it seems logical for me that it should also join the EU”. 

“The EU needs Croatia as much as Croatia needs the EU,” Friedrich stated. 

Parliament will vote on the 2007 progress reports on Croatia and Macedonia today (9 April). 

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