Macedonia Speeds Up EU Reforms

The draft laws apply to the finance, agriculture, environmental protection, food safety and transport sectors and will soon be submitted to the Parliament.

The adoption of these draft laws was envisaged in the government’s programme for last year, Naumovski said. However, many of them were delayed after the public and the press warned that due to the speed at which they were prepared they might contain serious flaws.
 
“Their quality is high” Naumovski reassured. “If there are additional suggestions they can undergo changes during the parliament session”, he said.

According to the national programme, in 2010 Macedonia should adopt 103 laws that are part of the EU agenda.

This autumn the country received a positive report from the European Commission including the recommendation for the start of its accession talks with the EU.

However, due to its unresolved bilateral “name” row with Greece, a member of the EU, the country was not given a start date for accession talks at the EU Council meeting in December 2009.

The EU said it will reconsider the start date issue in the first half of this year, hoping that Athens and Skopje will resolve the name row by then.