Zenović: Montenegro in the final phase of the negotiation process, a significant step towards full integration has been made

Montenegro's chief negotiator with the European Union, Predrag Zenović, assessed that the country is in the final phase of the negotiation process and that there is a real chance that the remaining chapters will be closed by the end of the year, including the key ones in the area of ​​the internal market and fundamental freedoms.

In the morning program of Television Vijesti, he reminded that Montenegro has already closed a large number of chapters within the internal market cluster, which, as assessed in the conversation, represents a significant step towards full integration into the European economic space.

The head of the working group for negotiating chapter 2, Ivana Šućur, explained that the closure of this chapter brings concrete rights to citizens in practice, especially in the area of ​​freedom of movement and work in EU member states, as well as access to social and health care under equal conditions as for EU citizens. When it comes to transitional solutions, i.e. temporary restrictions on the full application of the freedom of movement of workers, this will, Šućur explained, depend on the decisions of individual member states.

"Given the recent liberalization of regulations related to the labor market of member states due to labor shortages and other matters, we believe that in the coming period, Montenegro will prove that it is ready to implement all rules according to EU standards and that we will be able to mitigate these transitional periods as much as possible," said Šućur.

"Everything that the member states communicate to Montenegro in the joint position at the inter-wave conference will slowly be included together with Montenegro's requests for certain transfer periods in certain chapters. All of this will make up the entire corpus of what is the accession treaty, annexation and other documents that go with that treaty. Of course, we expect that as we close the chapters, all of these legal elements related to the acquis within that chapter will be included in the text of the accession treaty with the aim of finalizing it as soon as possible and of course, its ratification will follow, so that that phase can be accelerated as much as possible," said Zenović.