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European Union (Croatian Accession and Irish Protocol) Bill

I want to come to that in greater detail later, but I can say now that the process that Croatia has gone through has been much more demanding than what was expected of Romania and Bulgaria or earlier accession states. One lesson that EU member states drew from the experience of Romanian and Bulgarian accession was that we needed to invent an additional category of accession conditions covering justice and fundamental rights measures. That is now embodied in chapter 23 of the accession process. Those things that, in the case of Romania and Bulgaria, ended up being addressed—in my view, rather unhappily, in terms of the actions of all sides—through the co-operation and verification mechanism post-accession have, in the case of Croatia, been addressed upfront.

We heave learned further lessons from Croatia’s accession process. Although chapter 23 has been a significant advance, we recognise that, as we look forward to an accession process that in the Government’s view should embrace all the countries of the western Balkans, we need to find a way of ensuring not only that the accession process provides incentives for, and insists upon, rigorous reforms of the administrative and judicial life of an applicant country but that the applicant country has the opportunity to establish a clear track record of implementing those reforms. With the decision earlier this year to open accession negotiations with Montenegro, a new approach has been introduced under which those chapter 23 measures—and, for that matter, the chapter 24 measures applying to home affairs matters—will be dealt with first. The objective is to open those negotiating chapters early on, to see those reforms

under way and then to hold those chapters open until the end of the process, so that it becomes a question not only of seeing reforms enacted but of seeing a consistent track record.