Montenegro should be ready for membership in the European Union by the end of this year, promised at the beginning of last year the Minister of European Affairs Aleksandar Andrija Pejović. However, she has not even opened all the negotiation chapters yet.
The Center for Civic Education warns that such promises should be blamed for the lowest support for EU membership in the last 10 years.
"Unfounded announcements of the success of Montenegro by the leaders of the negotiation process are already causing damage and contributing to the strengthening of the fatigue that is already visible, both in the administration and in the public. Earlier announcements that Montenegro will complete all obligations by 2018 and be internally ready for EU membership, we have come to those who say that all chapters will be open by then, which is, to say the least, frivolous. Easy bidding with unrealistic deadlines raises expectations, especially among the citizens of Montenegro, while the simultaneous absence of results consequently leads to disappointment. As a result, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the support for the accession process is steadily declining, which calls into question the legitimacy of the process," Ana Vujošević, coordinator of the CCE program for European integration, told "Vijesti".
A survey by CEDEM showed in the middle of the year that membership support is the lowest in the last 10 years and has fallen by 20 percent compared to 2009.
In 2016, the minister promised that all chapters would be opened by the middle of 2017, and in 2017 he promised that they would all be opened by the middle of 2018. However, the president of the Parliamentary Committee for European Integration, Adrijan Vuksanović, said that Montenegro would open all the chapters by the end of 2018. .
When asked what are the main reasons for the one and a half year delay in opening all chapters, the minister did not specifically answer: "We, as we had planned, continued with a good dynamic during 2017 and out of the remaining five chapters, we handed over the negotiating position, while for two chapters we are working on the final document. Given that we have reached the end of the obligations from the initial benchmarks, I can say that we are really ending this year with excellent results and the fact that from 2018 we will exclusively focus on further internal work in order to gradually close the negotiation chapters".
Also, he was not specific on the question of whether the delay in the opening will significantly affect the closing of the chapter, that is, admission to the EU.
The minister said that it does not depend "only and exclusively" on Montenegro, but also on events within the EU: "Parallel with the activities on opening chapters, Montenegro is working on implementing reforms that lead to fulfilling the conditions for their closure. Therefore, the reform process is taking place as planned, regardless of the definition of the date for the opening and closing of the chapter".
In this regard, the CGO representative said that she does not expect a positive new unofficial paper for key chapters 23 and 24, which will be published this month, but that the new report of the European Commission will not state any significant progress: "But there will be a precise analysis of the situation which will clearly show us the results. Ahead of us is a phase of the process in which there will be more and more insistence on meeting the standards set by the EC, and there will be less room for maneuver to avoid assumed obligations", warned Vujošević.
When asked who are the main culprits for slowing down the process of opening the chapter, she said that in Montenegro it is subordinated to the interests of the regime:
"In the current course of negotiations, the reform processes were carried out only to the extent that they did not endanger internal party and related interests, and as long as the situation is like this, it is difficult for us to progress further. In order to fundamentally implement the reform of the system and prepare for full membership in the EU, the authorities must stop simulating reform processes and work on solving the accumulated problems with measurable results, which are continuously pointed out by the EC. Otherwise, the new deadline announced by the chief negotiator that Montenegro will join the EU in 2021 will be another one that we will change on the fly, and which only serves to acquire daily political problems".
He does not know how many chapters he will open with the EU
In more than five years of negotiations, Montenegro opened 28 out of a total of 33 chapters and temporarily closed three.
At the last intergovernmental conference, she opened two chapters and closed the chapter concerning foreign affairs.
The next conference is expected in December, and the Ministry did not say what can be expected at it.
"How many chapters we will open at the next intergovernmental conference depends on the decision of the Council of the EU, that is, the positions of all 28 member states," said Pejović for "Vijesti".
Vujošević notes that in five years of negotiations, Montenegro closed only three chapters, two of which did not have benchmarks, so they were closed on the same day they were opened.
Croatia, for example, completed the negotiation process in five years and nine months.
The minister's promises about the opening of all chapters:
"In this direction, with the EU accession program of Montenegro, we defined the dynamics of reforms and set ourselves the goal of completing all obligations by 2018 and being internally ready for membership." (January 2016, “Victory”)
"I am confident that we have the capacity to complete it by the middle of next year." (April 2016, “Victory”)
"Taking into account the scope and complexity of the obligations within individual negotiation chapters, I appreciate that it is realistic to expect that we will open all chapters by the end of 2017."(June 2016, "News")
"I estimate that by the middle of next year we can complete the process of opening chapters." (May 2017, Mina)
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