Sweden Plans Conference With Croatia July 24

Sweden will take the presidency of the European Union from the Czech Republic on July 1. Sources say Croatia is first on their list.

Sweden, who will soon take the six month presidency of the European Union, is planning on organizing the first intergovernmental conference on accession with Croatia as early as July 24, confirmed a diplomatic source for Hina.

On Wednesday the Czech presidency decided to cancel the accession conference with Croatia planned for June 26, because there are no chapters to open or close due to the Slovenian blockade. This is the third time the Czech presidency has cancelled such an accession meeting for Croatia, and the first time that a presidency has passed without any accession meetings being held since negotiations started in October 2005.

Sweden has previously announced that they plan on holding four accession meetings during their six month presidency.

Pause for consideration

Besides the chapters being blocked by Slovenia, Croatia has done its part of the work to close the chapters of free worker movement, financial services, consumer and health protection as well as energy.

Those four chapters or some of them could come into consideration for closing at the accession conference in July, under the condition that Slovenia does not pull a veto again.

As far as solving the Slovenian blockade is concerned, everyone in the European Union is announcing a ‘pause for consideration’ after all of the efforts by expansion commissioner Olli Rehn during the last six months have not given results.