Regarding the statements at the panel discussion entitled Civil Society and Negotiations in Chapters 23 and 24 (“Civilno društvo i pregovori u poglavljima 23 i 24”), hosted in Podgorica on 6 November 2014, the Chief Negotiator’s Office wishes to communicate the following to the public:
Believing that European integration is a process pertaining to the whole of society, the Government and the line Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration have steered the entire process of Montenegro’s accession to the European Union guided by the principles of transparency and inclusiveness.
Guided by these principles, we invited into the negotiating structure various experts from the whole of society able to give a contribution to the successful implementation of the European tasks. Consequently, out of 1300 working group members, 381 are civil society representatives, which is one third of the negotiating structure.
More concretely, we wish to reiterate that the working group for Chapter 23 has 47 members, of whom four are from NGOs, whereas the working group for Chapter 24 has 44 members, of whom two are from civil society. All members of the working groups, regardless of whether they come from the civil service of civil society, have an equal status and actively contribute to the working groups at the expert level.
When it comes to the process transparency, we reiterate that all the documents are published at the Ministry website and in this way made available to the public. In addition, with the view to bringing the process closer to the citizens, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and other line ministries have hosted multiple public events on these chapters and participated at the events hosted by NGOs, thus contributing to the transparency of the negotiation process. Moreover, the documents from the negotiation process are available at the Council of the European Union’s website.
The information on interim benchmarks for Chapters 23 and 24 is contained in the EU’s Common Position on these chapters, which were opened at the Inter-Governmental Conference of 18 December 2013.
http://www.mvpei.gov.me/pretraga/134094/Brisel-Treci-sastanak-Konferencije-o-pristupanju-Crne-Gore-Evropskoj-uniji-na-ministarskom-nivou-otvorena-kljucna-poglavlja-za-v.html
http://register.consilium.europa.eu/doc/srv?l=EN&f=AD%2017%202013%20INIT
http://register.consilium.europa.eu/doc/srv?l=EN&f=AD%2018%202013%20REV%201
The approach to negotiations and the synergy we achieved have resulted in opening accession negotiations in 12 chapters, of which two have been provisionally closed. This is a shared success. We believe that we have laid solid foundations for our future European path and we hope that the following stages will also be crossed jointly and with the same vigour.
