Asked about the possible date of accession of Montenegro to the EU, Mr Drobnic said he believed it could not be reliably assessed when Montenegro would meet conditions for the membership, because they did not know how fast that process would develop.
During the debate “EU – Achieved Results and Further Steps”, Mr Drobnic reminded Montenegro was a small country with a small state administration which could be considered “an objective handicap” that should be taken into account. According to him it could be overcome with better planning.
“At this moment it is impossible to predict the time when Montenegro will enter the EU,” Mr Drobnic said explaining that he was not referring to the statement by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who said that there would be no enlargement. As Drobnic said, he was referring to Montenegro’s capacity to perform all the steps on the path towards the EU.
He added that Montenegro should not be compared to the countries in the region, but rather to measure its progress in relation to the criteria met.
Repeating that Montenegro was a leader in the region in terms of the EU integration, he said Serbia was the closest to it in that process.
“You are not supposed to compare yourself to Serbia, which has not opened even one chapter. You shall rather measure your success in relation to the 35 chapters that are to be closed as soon as possible,” Mr Drobnic said.
Pointing to the complexity of the accession process, he said that there was no difference between domestic and foreign policy, which required different personnel both at the state and local level.
“Three years could be seen as both long and short period. There is no model according to which we could say whether Montenegro moved fast or slowly in this process,” he said.
The EU integration process, as Mr Drobnic explained, required decentralisation, transfer of powers to lower levels.
He explained that this process was not free and that the financial effects came later. However, as he said, the process should not be reduced to that level.
Commenting on the progress in the rule of law, Mr Drobnic said that several important formal steps had been made in this area, but that the European Commission had not been satisfied with the achieved level yet.
When it comes to the application of electoral legislation in Montenegro, he said that it was viewed and treated as a separate issue, given that elections ended with allegations on election fraud.
Presenting the results achieved in the previous three years, the Chief Negotiator for Montenegro’s Accession to EU, Aleksandar Andrija Pejovic, reminded that the negotiations between Montenegro and the EU had started on June 29th 2012.
He said that the negotiating team consisted of 1,300 people, 382 of them belonging to the civil sector and 908 to the state institutions. As he added 55% of the team were women.
He explained that the current work was aimed at meeting the interim benchmarks.
He said that of the 13 chapters with the benchmarks, seven of them had been met and work on the remaining six chapters was ongoing.
“By the end of the year, three most difficult chapters remain – environment, food safety and competition,” Mr Pejovic said.
As he explained, it was necessary to know that the benchmarks were mostly relating to strategic plans.
When it comes to the area of environment, Pejovic said they were working intensively on the strategy, adding that it would hopefully be adopted by the end of the year.
“I assume that agriculture chapter will be opened next year,” Pejovic added.
