During the evening of Tuesday 13 December, Montenegro opened two new negotiation chapters – Chapter 11 on agriculture and rural development, and Chapter 19 on social policy and employment.
With these new chapters, Podgorica has now opened 26 out of 35 chapters. Two have been provisionally closed. Montenegro is the candidate country that has opened the most negotiation chapters.
Slovakia's minister for foreign affairs, Miroslav Lajčák, took advantage of the press conference that followed the opening of the chapters to underline his hope that all the political parties would stay committed to the path of reforms, following the elections on 16 October (see EUROPE 11648). "The government and opposition must continue to have the accession principle as their goal", European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Johannes Hahn added. He thus said that it was important to lower the political tension so that the parliament could resume its work. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)