On 16 September 2022, an explanatory Screening meeting with Albania and North Macedonia took place on Eurostat’s premises, as part of the EU accession negotiation process. Two large delegations from Tirana and Skopje took part in the meeting, together with more than 30 participants from Eurostat.
The accession negotiation process to the EU was launched for Albania and North Macedonia on 19 July 2022 through first Intergovernmental Conferences with each country. The next phase for both countries is the screening process, which covers the entire spectrum of EU policies and legislation, organised in six clusters covering all the 35 chapters of the EU acquis. Chapter 18 - Statistics is part of the Fundamentals cluster, together with the acquis on fundamental rights and freedoms, judiciary, justice and home affairs.
The analytical examination of the body of EU laws (acquis), the so-called Screening, enables candidate countries to familiarise themselves with the EU laws and standards and the obligations they entail. Screening is the first step in the accession negotiation process.
It consists of two phases:
- the explanatory session where the Commission departments explain chapter by chapter the EU acquis.
- the bilateral session where each candidate country is invited to present where it stands, by chapter, in its preparations to adopt and implement the acquis.
An introductory explanatory meeting on the statistical acquis was already organised in February 2019. Last Friday’s meeting was complementary to the 2019 one: the delegations from Albania and North Macedonia were informed on the updates and new legislation in the field of statistics, which have been adopted since the first explanatory meeting. Eurostat units presented the updates for each statistical area where the legislation has been changed.
As the next step, bilateral screenings will be organised for the two countries separately throughout the year until November 2023. It will be the turn of the countries to present their self-assessment for every chapter, while the subject matter units of the Commission will have the possibility to clarify outstanding questions.
More information:
- Dedicated section on Enlargement
- Basic figures on Enlargement countries
- Enlargement countries - recent economic developments
- European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations – Albania
- European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations – North Macedonia
- EU-Albania factsheet
- EU-North Macedonia factsheet
- EU accession process step-by-step
To contact us, please visit our User Support page.
For press queries, please contact our Media Support.