BRUSSELS, May 13 (Hina) - Croatia and the European Union will initial a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) in Brussels on Monday, after only five months of negotiations. The signing of the SAA is Croatia's first step toward
its strategic goal - EU membership. The SAA will be initialled on the margins of a regular monthly meeting of the EU Council of Ministers by Croatia's Foreign Minister Tonino Picula and European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, in the presence of EU Foreign Ministers. The agreement should be signed this autumn, after its text is harmonised in all 11 EU official languages and Croatian. "The signing of the SAA is of historic importance for Croatia because it is the first contractual relationship between Croatia and the EU," said Croatia's chief negotiator Neven Mimica in Zagreb last Friday, after the end of the third and last official round of talks. The talks on the SAA started at the Zagreb
BRUSSELS, May 13 (Hina) - Croatia and the European Union will
initial a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) in
Brussels on Monday, after only five months of negotiations. The
signing of the SAA is Croatia's first step toward its strategic goal
- EU membership.
The SAA will be initialled on the margins of a regular monthly
meeting of the EU Council of Ministers by Croatia's Foreign
Minister Tonino Picula and European Foreign Affairs Commissioner
Chris Patten, in the presence of EU Foreign Ministers.
The agreement should be signed this autumn, after its text is
harmonised in all 11 EU official languages and Croatian.
"The signing of the SAA is of historic importance for Croatia
because it is the first contractual relationship between Croatia
and the EU," said Croatia's chief negotiator Neven Mimica in Zagreb
last Friday, after the end of the third and last official round of
talks.
The talks on the SAA started at the Zagreb Summit on November 24 last
year and the first negotiating round took place on December 18 in
Brussels.
The SAA gives Croatia the status of an associate EU member and
potential full membership candidate. For the SAA to go into force,
it must first be ratified by the parliaments of EU member-
countries, the European Parliament and the Croatian Parliament, a
process expected to last about two years.
This time gap will be bridged with a so-called provisional
agreement, which will be signed simultaneously with the SAA and
which will include the most important parts of the SAA,
particularly those related to trade and transport. The provisional
agreement would go into force on January 1, 2002.
In the political sense, the SAA enables countries included in the
Stabilisation and Association Process to draw closer to the EU on
the individual basis, making that process conditional on
cooperation, with the of aim of stabilising the region, however,
exclusively through bilateral agreements.
The SAA, which is a new generation of agreements on association with
the EU, is intended for five South-East European countries
(Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Macedonia) and
Macedonia is the only country to have signed it.
(hina) rml