Podgorica, (MINA-BUSINESS) – Professor Gordana Djurovic has said that the closing benchmarks for Chapter 17 – Economic and Monetary Policy are rather ambitions, adding however that there will be no unpleasant surprises or need for plan B if Montenegro gradually works on meeting these criteria.
Answering the question to which degree will the fact that Montenegro has been using the euro as an official currency since 2002 be a challenge in further negotiations and if there is a backup plan, she said that every country needs a backup plan for its development and integration options.
“However, an important part of negotiations in this field was finished when the first institutional arrangement, the Stabilization and Association Agreement, was negotiated in 2007 and when Montenegro became a candidate country in 2010,” Djurovic told Mina-business agency.
According to Djurovic, who is also President of the Montenegrin pan-European Union, this means that the country maintained the right to continue to use the euro, even though it is not in compliance with rules of the European Monetary Union (EMU), meaning that it has been granted an exemption, which is very important as an act of understanding on the part of the EU.
“After that, this process could enter a calmer phase of preparation for and opening of accession negotiations, which happened in June. The closing benchmarks are quite ambitions, it is necessary to work on their fulfilment gradually and there will be no unpleasant surprises or need for plan B,” says Djurovic.
She reminded that the complexity of this Chapter had been presented by the EU at the opening of negotiations on 29 June 2012, given that the euro was an official tender in Montenegro, which was against the EMU accession rules.
“Opening the negotiations, Montenegro said that it would strive to meet the criteria for approximation to the euro area, agreeing to settle the euro issue during the accession negotiations,” says Djurovic.
Djurovic says that this is the reason why this chapter was among the last ones to have been opened.
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