Hahn Kickstarts Macedonia's EU Screening Process

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...

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