Negotiations with the European Union are not real negotiations given that each country that wants to joint the EU must fully adopt Europe's acquis communautaire, but some chapters allow longer or shorter transition period for full adjustment.
In fact, the countries are negotiating about deadlines by which they would adopt certain parts of acquis communautaire. The only negotiations being conducted are those on temporary or permanent exemptions.
The European Union can also request exemptions. An example is manpower movement - member states have a possibility to limit the access to workers from ten countries that joined the EU last year for a certain period of time.
The negotiations with Croatia will be conducted in 35 chapters while ten new member states negotiated about 29 of the 31 chapters of acquis communautaire. Negotiations are not conducted on two chapters - "institutional regulations" and "others".
Some of the 29 chapters in the negotiating framework for Croatia have been divided into several chapters so as to facilitate the negotiations. For example the chapter on agriculture and fishing industry have been divided into two parts, as well as the chapter on the judiciary and internal affairs.
After the opening of the negotiations at the EU-Croatia conference, the European Commission and Croatia's negotiating team will agree on when to launch the screening - a deep analysis of the adjustment of Croatia's legislation to European standards.
According to Croatia's chief negotiator Vladimir Drobnjak, the screening of seven chapters could start as early as 20 October.
The negotiations will be conducted as part of the EU-Croatia conference at which all decisions have to be adopted unanimously.
Negotiating meetings are held on the ministerial level or at the level of permanent representatives of member states and ambassadors or chief negotiators of a candidate country. The meetings are presided by a representative of the country currently chairing the European Union.
The pace of the negotiations depends on the level of preparedness of a candidate country and the complexity of the problem that needs to be resolved.
The last round of the negotiations showed that the most difficult chapters are environmental protection, agriculture, market competition, financial issues, freedom of the movement of goods, capital and manpower. Environmental protection is a difficult issue because it requires significant funds.
After negotiations on a certain chapter are completed, the negotiations are temporarily concluded until all chapters are completed and an accession agreement is signed.
The accession agreement must be ratified by all member states and a candidate country.