Albania-EU meet again on January 16 in Brussels

20:00 06/01/2023

At the center of the discussions is the chapter on democratic institutions

January 16 will be the date when the meetings between the group of negotiators for this year between Albania and EU negotiators for the chapter of democratic institutions will begin. According to the Albanian chief negotiator, Majlinda Dhuka, we are dealing with the preparatory phase of the negotiations, where the EC, through various directorates, explains the directives to Albania. Dhuka has stated that Albania has made more progress than other countries in the region. According to her, if we compare it with North Macedonia, it is noticed that Albania performs better in most chapters.

Under the six-month Swedish presidency of the EU, the meetings within the process of revising the legislation are expected to be busy. On September 15, 2022, the European Commission officially started the Screening process with Albania and North Macedonia. Analytical examination of the EU legislature (Acquis), the so-called Screening process, which enables candidate countries to familiarize themselves with EU laws and standards and the obligations they entail.

It also enables the country’s level of preparedness and plans for further rapprochement to be examined and thus to obtain preliminary indications of the issues most likely to arise during the negotiations. Screening is the first step in the membership negotiation process.

The Screening process is structured along six thematic clusters. These clusters include relevant chapters of the European Legislature together with broad topics related to good governance, the internal market, economic competition and connectivity.

The European Commission will assess and report to the Council on the degree of readiness of a candidate country for a given cluster, on the candidate country’s plans for future preparations and on preliminary indications of the issues that will most likely be presented during the negotiations. .

The Council will decide, by unanimity, whether to determine the initial standards for each negotiating cluster, based on the Commission’s proposal in the Screening report.

Within a few months, the opening of the first chapters of the negotiations will have to be proposed and approved.

Decision-making until the full membership of our country in the EU will be based on individual merits for the realization of the required reforms. Priority according to the conditions of the European Council is the deepening of the reform in justice with the creation of a history of punishments of high officials based on final decisions by the Albanian judiciary.

Of all the EU’s experience so far, Austria, Finland and Sweden have completed the talks the fastest, in just under two years, while Croatia took just under eight years from the start of negotiations to full member of the bloc.

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