News
9/20/2022 08:07
The Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European affairs and chief negotiator with the European Union, Bojan Maricik, at today's explanatory screening meeting on the Economic Criteria, said that with the formal integration of the economic criteria in the Foundations cluster, the fulfilment of the Copenhagen Economic Criteria will be among the main political priorities during the accession negotiations.
According to the chief negotiator, the formal integration of the Economic Criteria into the Foundations cluster only emphasizes the importance of economic management and the need to strengthen it in order to avoid the risk of the country having a macroeconomic imbalance after joining the EU.
In his address, Vice Prime Minister Maricik referred to the work done so far, stressing that North Macedonia has so far submitted eight programs for economic reforms, and according to the evaluations of the European Commission, there has been an improvement in the quality of both the documents as a whole and the economic dialogue.
- This reflects the constant efforts we make to strengthen our institutional capacities for better coordination of economic policies and preparation for future participation in the European Semester process, Maricik pointed out.
The new methodology for the enlargement of the EU from 2020, for the first time, puts the economic criteria at the forefront of the process of accession to the EU, that is, in the first cluster, Foundations.
In addition to the economic criteria, the cluster Foundations for the first time, as part of the accession negotiations, also includes the functioning of democratic institutions and the reform of the public administration.