On Thursday 27 and Friday 28 September, Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FRYOM) started the preliminary explanatory screening of the acquis communautaire with a view to opening their EU accession negotiations.
"This ongoing explanatory screening is a crucial step in the preparatory work for the opening of accession negotiations", European Commissioner for Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn told press.
The first technical meeting enabled screening of Chapter 23 of the EU accession negotiations, which focuses on the judicial apparatus and fundamental rights.
Although the EU Council has not yet approved the opening of the negotiations with the two states, and is only expected to do so in June 2019 at the earliest, Hahn warned that there was no time to lose because there are over 160,000 pages of European legislation to be studied. He added that the screening process generally takes "a year to a year and a half". "The objective is to do it in a year", he said, before adding: "we have an ambitious road map that maps out the route from now to September 2019". (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)