Skopje, 27 September 2022 (MIA) – The expertise, recommendations and advice that the Macedonian working groups received from the European Commission will serve as a good guide in the preparations for the bilateral screening and Chapter 23 – Judiciary and Fundamental Rights, said Deputy PM for European affairs, Bojan Marichikj, at the last explanatory screening meeting within the Fundamentals Cluster on Tuesday. “The institutions and the administration are motivated, while the Government possesses the necessary political will to continue with the judiciary reforms and deliver to the citizens a judicial system that will operate in accordance with the European standards,” wrote Marichikj, who is also the country’s chief EU negotiator, in a Facebook post. According to Marichikj, progress in the area of rule of law will be a clear indicator of the course of the negotiating process and that both the Macedonian negotiating team and himself are well aware of the challenge they face in this chapter. “We have made changes in the way the judicial system functions, but this is an area in which we still have work to do and which always has room for improvement,” added Marichikj. According to the Secretariat for European Affairs, Tuesday’s conclusion of the explanatory meeting on Chapter 23 in Brussels marks the end of the explanatory screening for Cluster 1 – Fundamentals. The bilateral meetings on the chapters and areas from this cluster will be held in November and December 2022. This cluster is considered to be the most important part of the EU negotiations process, since it contains chapters related to national institutions, rule of law, political and economic criteria, public administration reform, public procurement, financial control and statistics. The opening of other clusters will depend on our progress in this cluster, said the Secretariat. The screening process will continue with the explanatory meetings on chapters within Cluster 2 – Internal Market, set to begin in the first half of October. ad/ik/