The Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU Member States (Coreper) adopted the Union’s common position for the start of negotiations on the first batch of accession chapters with Albania, the Hungarian presidency of the European Union announced.

The start of these negotiations will take place on October 15 in Luxembourg, with the holding of the EU-Albania Intergovernmental Conference.

This first batch of accession chapters concerns the fundamental issues that Albania must resolve as a candidate country. This bundle includes five critical chapters:

• Judiciary and fundamental rights.
• Justice, freedom, and security.
• Public procurement.
• Statistics.
• Financial control.

In view of this development, a meeting was held yesterday in Budapest between the Prime Ministers of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and Albania, Edi Rama. At the meeting, the prime ministers of the two countries discussed the accession negotiations and agreed to continue strengthening their bilateral cooperation.

It is noted that last month Coreper agreed to send a joint letter of the 27 EU member states to Albania for the start of negotiations on the first batch of accession chapters, but not to Skopje, thus proceeding to disconnect the so-called  “pair” of the two candidate countries for joining the EU.

The government of Skopje has expressed its displeasure at the disconnection of the country’s European course from that of Albania and has noted that the EU is unfair to Skopje.

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