On Thursday 19 April, Montenegro's Prime Minister Duško Marković said he hoped his country could open the last negotiation chapters in 2018.
"We have decided to deal with the challenges more responsibly and I think this approach will enable us to open the three remaining chapters and to fulfil the interim criteria on Chapters 23 and 24", Marković said at a press conference with High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini. The country has already opened 30 negotiation chapters and provisionally closed three of them.
Marković added that his country would work on the shortcomings noted in the progress report on his country – a report that was published by the European Commission on 17 April.
"We see some very encouraging progress (...) in particular on public administration reform and on economic issues (...) We look forward to seeing progress in other areas", Mogherini stated. She underlined that progress was needed on the issues of the rule of law and media freedom. "We believe that it would be extremely important, if the political debate with all political forces could return to the democratic institutions of this country, to Parliament", Mogherini said, calling for a solution to the current parliamentary boycott to be found, "in particular through constructive dialogue involving all political actors".
Mogherini also hailed the role of Montenegro in the region. "Recently, you have shown wisdom and political sense in facilitating the ratification of the agreement on the border demarcation with Kosovo", she said by way of example, describing this as "good and welcome news". (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)