The two-day seminar, organised by the Croatian Foreign Affairs and European Integration Ministry and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Croatia, brought together state employees from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro and Turkey.
After ten countries joined the European Union in 2004, the EU introduced several new elements in accession negotiations with an aim of improving their quality and ensuring that the newcomers are one hundred percent prepared for membership.
The most important novelty in Croatia's negotiations are benchmarks for opening and provisionally closing policy chapters and the fact that the dynamics of the talks on each policy chapter primarily hinges on the pace of fulfillment of those criteria, Croatian Chief Negotiator Vladimir Drobnjak told the seminar.
The system of benchmarks renders the negotiations more complicated and slower and enables individual member-states to set up additional criteria, which makes the entire process slower, he said.
Good sides of this system are that candidates are better prepared, attain better results and they also encourage reforms, according to him.
Croatia has been given 23 benchmarks for opening 11 chapters and 104 benchmarks for the closing of chapters, with many of them being complex, which is why their real number rises to 500, and other southeastern EU aspirants can expect even more benchmarks, Drobnjak said.
The most difficult benchmarks refer to proof that certain measures have been taken and this also takes some time, he said.
Apart from benchmarks, countries-candidates are also monitored after the provisional closure of policy chapters, which means the job is never over, he added.
Drobnjak's legal advisor, Irena Andrassy, said Croatia signed a Stabilisation and Association Agreement on 29 October 2001, it filed its EU membership application on 21 February 2003, was granted the status of EU candidate on 18 June 2004, and began the negotiations on 3 October 2005.
Croatia still has to close six negotiating areas plus the policy chapter "Other Issues" which is not subject to negotiations. It expects the completion of the membership talks by the end of June, when Hungary finishes its presidency over the bloc.
Croatia's negotiations are divided into 35 policy chapters.