The policy areas closed are Chapter 11 - Agriculture and Rural Development - and Chapter 22 - Regional Policy and the Coordination of Structural Instruments. Three quarters of the annual European budget go to agricultural subsidies and regional and cohesion policies.
This day is one of the more important days in our negotiating process as we closed two big and important chapters. With the closing of those chapters, Croatia has demonstrated compatibility with the most complex European mechanisms, Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Jandrokovic said at the end of the intergovernmental conference.
Vladimir Drobnjak, Croatia's chief negotiator in the accession negotiations with the European Union, said the closing of those two policy areas signalised that the end of the negotiations was near.
The Agriculture and Rural Development policy chapter defines the target financial package and how the funds will be distributed.
A total of EUR 373 million are envisaged for direct payments to farmers for the first year of Croatia's membership, and additional EUR 352 million for rural development.
Croatia gets quotas for sugar and milk, 193,000 tonnes and 750,000 litres respectively per annum. Croatia can count on EUR 10 million for the removal of mines from farmland.
The closing of the Chapter 22 "Regional Policy and the Coordination of Structural Instruments" creates prerequisites for the use of money from structural and cohesion funds, Drobnjak said.
In the first two years of its membership, Croatia will be able to withdraw EUR 2.2 billion of those funds.