News
11/21/2022 04:00
The Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European affairs, Bojan Maricikj, opened the three-day bilateral screening for Chapter 24, "Justice, Freedom and Security" in Brussels today, where he emphasized that Chapter 24, "Justice, Freedom and Security" brings the essential change of the Macedonian society and will be the most extensive for harmonization in the membership negotiations with the EU.
Regarding the work done within the framework of the chapter, Maricikj recalled the signed agreement with Frontex, the current assessment of the IT and communication structure to support the identification and registration of mixed migration flows, the prepared Master Plan for defining specifications for upgrading the information and communication infrastructure, towards future connection with EU information systems.
In the area of the fight against organized crime, as confirmed in the last Progress Report, Deputy Prime Minister Maricik indicated that the legislative framework is largely in line with European standards, as well as that there is a wide range of strategic documents, based on the relevant EU strategies, such as the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking and Illegal Migration, the National Drug Strategy, the National Cyber Security Strategy, etc. Therefore, he pointed to the planned activities, which, as he said, will be presented more extensively by the representatives of the competent institutions.
- In the days ahead, we will use the opportunity to present the level of compliance of our legislation with the European acquis and further plans for compliance in the areas where we have been working for many years to transpose the relevant acquis, as well as to strengthen our administrative and operational capacity. Chapter 24 is the backbone of the visa liberalization regime that was made available to us back in 2009 and has given our citizens the first-hand benefit of EU membership, said Deputy Prime Minister Maricikj.
The Macedonian negotiating team is composed of representatives of the Working Group on Chapter 24, "Justice, Freedom and Security" who come from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of good governance policies, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs works, Ministry of Health, Public Prosecutor's Office, National Bank, Directorate for Financial Intelligence and Secretariat for European Affairs.
The competent institution for this chapter is the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the working group is led by the Coordinator of Chapter 24, the head of the sector for negotiations and European integration at the Ministry of the Interior, Svetlana Vlahović Dimanovska.
The State Secretary of the Secretariat for European Affairs, Drita Abdiu-Halili, was also part of the Macedonian negotiating team, which today gave 23 presentations on five topics to the representatives of the European Commission: Fight against organized crime, cooperation in the field of drugs, fight against terrorism and prevention of radicalism, cooperation in law enforcement and exchange of information and border management.
The presentations by the Macedonian team for Chapter 24, within Cluster 1, "Fundamental values", will last until November 24th and will provide a solid basis for the preparation of the screening report that the European Commission will prepare and send to the Council of EU on further procedure, which will depend on the dynamics of the negotiations in this chapter.