Coordinators and contact persons will be appointed for each of the 29 chapters of the acquis communautaire, the European Union's legal standards. The Government also bound the European Integration Ministry to coordinate the screening process, a thorough overview and evaluation of how much national legislation is approximate to EU standards.
The screening process is the initial stage of membership talks which serves as the basis for the definition of negotiating positions. The process officially starts on the day the negotiations begin, which is most likely to occur next March with the convening of a Croatia-EU intergovernmental conference.
In a bid not to wait for the start of negotiations, the Croatian government and the European Commission agreed to launch a prescreening process for all chapters of the entry talks.
The first prescreening meeting will take place in Zagreb on September 28-30, and several more will be held in the following three months, either in Zagreb or Brussels. Prescreening consultations will be held by subcommittees in charge of individual chapters of the Interim Agreement.
Prescreening is seen as very important because it can considerably shorten the time required for the screening process and accelerate the start of more substantial talks on each chapter. In some candidate-countries' cases, screening took up to five months.
Screening is carried out by the candidate-country's state administration bodies and the European Commission's Directorates-General.
The process consists of Croatia giving verbal or written answers to European Commission queries if it can accept a specific acquis chapter, if it intends to seek transitional agreements in the chapter being analysed, when it intends to approximate its legislation pertaining to a certain area, etc.
Screening serves as a basis for drawing up lists of areas which are not approximate, and later for the preparation of negotiating positions.
Once screening is completed, the European Commission submits a report about potential problems during negotiations to the Council of the European Union. Based on this report, the Council makes a unanimous decision to begin negotiations on a specific chapter, starting from the draft joint negotiating position recommended by the Commission and the candidate-country's negotiating position.
In areas in which the national legislation is already approximate to European standards, the Commission will evaluate the capability of institutions to enforce the laws in question.
Screening enables the identification of problematic areas in negotiations. Possible exceptions from European legislation and transitional periods required for full approximation are defined during negotiations.
Each chapter of the negotiations on which agreement is reached is closed temporarily. It may be reopened before the accession agreement is signed if new regulations have been adopted for the acquis chapter in question or if the candidate-country fails to meet its commitments.