It was announced today during the meeting between civil sector and governmental Negotiating Group for Action plan for Chapter 24, which was established in the middle of last year, that in January Serbia will deliver to European Commission the first half-yearly report concerning realization of the Action Plan for Chapter 24, which encompasses justice, freedom and safety.
The president of Negotiating Group for Chapter 24 from Ministry of Internal Affairs Zoran Lazarov has said that last year was exceptionally successful for Chapter 24 – it has been opened, Action Plan and negotiating position have been accepted, we received the transition criteria as we expected.
According to him, activities regarding the Action Plan were mostly completed even before they were officially adopted, in what percentage will be revealed after the first report to EC, which will in March distribute this report to the member states of European Union.
Action plan is a living document subject to changes due to high EU legislative activity, said Lazarov, stating that the report that should be submitted two times per year to EC and will also contain narrative part and table.
We have shown that the partnership with non-government sector is very important to us and also is crucial in creation of documents, and now we are trying to show that this partnership is also very valuable in the context of realization of measures from the Action Plan, said Tanja Miščević the head of Negotiating team for joining the EU.
The quality of these activities is especially important, whether law proposals, drafts of secondary legislations and plans of ministries are good enough to create progress in the lives of citizens, said the director of the Belgrade center for Security Policy and Coordinator of the Working Group for The National Convent on the EU (NKEU) Sonja Stojanovic Gajić.
According to her, there is still a lot of confusion regarding the availabilityy of this document and in what stage of the process will the civil sector have access to it. There is also the matter of whether everything that government does goes directly to EC and after that to civil societies, or should the civil society be consulted first before Brussels.
Question of methodology and eligibility of certain measures is very important, because there have been disagreements about Chapter 23, said Milan Antonijević, director of Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM) and Coordinator of the Working Group for Chapter 23.
According to Antonijević, in submitted reports regarding completion of Action Plan for Chapter 23 it was stated that some measures are completely fulfilled when not even the secondary legislation, implementation of which is closely monitored, was not adopted. Therefore, this did not reflect the true state of this process.
The goal of our communication with the Ministry of Justice was not to give wrong impressions to institutions in charge of implementing certain measures, which is extremely important especially at the start of the process, said Antonijević.
