Brussels, 19 October 2023 (MIA) – The bilateral screening meeting on Chapter 11: Agriculture and Rural Development, within Cluster 5: Resources, Agriculture and Cohesion, is resuming on Thursday in Brussels.

The bilateral screening, which began on Monday and was expected to continue on Tuesday and Wednesday, was postponed due to the shooting in the Belgian capital on Monday evening in which two Swedish nationals were killed and one was wounded.

In his opening address on Monday before European Commission representatives of the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development and Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy, Ljupcho Nikolovski, presented the latest legal solutions, current legal framework, institutional capacities, and the opportunities and challenges of Macedonian agriculture and rural development, MIA’s Brussels correspondent reported.

Deputy chief EU negotiator and Secretariat for European Affairs (SEA) State Secretary, Drita Abdiu-Halili, expressed gratitude to the European Commission for the support in the development of agriculture and rural development in North Macedonia, highlighting that the country is a leader in the region in the use of IPARD programme funds.

"We are proud to have signed the Financing Agreement on IPARD III at the beginning of October. In addition, the IPARD III programme is 98 percent realized. This gives us encouragement and hope to achieve a 100 percent realization," Abdiu-Halili said.

Chapter 11 covers many obligating rules, which for the most part are directly applicable and refer to their effective implementation and control by the public administration, as a necessity for the functioning of the common EU agriculture policy.

In addition to representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy in charge of this chapter and SEA, representatives from the Agency for Financial Support in Agriculture and Rural Development, State Agriculture Inspectorate, Food and Veterinary Agency and State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption are also part of the Macedonian delegation.

According to SEA, recently North Macedonia has been working on transposition of the relevant EU legislation, and strengthening the administrative and operational capacities, by adopting the National Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development 2021–2027, in accordance with the EU's Common Agricultural Policy 2023-2027.

Photo: MIA archive