Strasbourg, 26/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - Adopting a report by Austrian Socialist Hannes Swoboda on the 2006 follow-up report on Croatia, the European Parliament commented that Croatia has already made great progress in moving towards joining the EU. In line with the European Commission's report on the enlargement strategy and the main challenges for 2006-2007, the MEPs feel that Croatia still meets the political criteria for accession, and congratulate the Croatian authorities for the speed at which they are progressing in the accession negotiations, particularly in terms of preparing vitally important legislation in areas like the civil service, court administrations and combatting corruption. The EP stresses the need to rapidly and effectively implement the reforms decided upon to date to continue to modernise the country and consolidate democracy and the social market economy.
While calling for reform, Hannes Swoboda said that Croatia's accession could send a good signal to the region by demonstrating that a country which has done its homework can actually join the EU.
Gunter Gloser said the German presidency fully shared the European Parliament's view that Croatia had made good progress and the talks were advancing well, but extra effort was needed in areas like reforming the civil service and the justice system, tackling corruption and reforming the economy.
Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said that the speed at which Croatia moved towards accession would depend on the speed of reform and adoption of EU law. Six of the 33 negotiating chapters have been opened and two provisionally concluded, he added, noting that he hoped to open other chapters under the German presidency. Work was essential, he added, to reform the judicial system, the administration, combat corruption and restructure parts of the ship-building and steel industries. (oj)