The European Commission prepares the reports on the rule of law both for the member states and for the four candidate countries for EU membership - Serbia, Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia.
These documents will be published on the same day - July 3, an unofficial source from Brussels told the European Western Balkans /EWB/ portal.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was the first to announce that the EC would publish the reports on the rule of law and on the candidates. In his State of the Union speech on 13 September 2023, von der Leyen explained that this would be done so that countries could progress more quickly towards membership of the Union.
In fact, such a step means that the European Commission will assess the state of the rule of law with the criteria for countries that are already part of the EU. That is why the detailed descriptions and recommendations given in these documents will allow a clear comparison of the situation. In this way, an even more accurate picture of the "chronic" difficulties facing the candidate countries will be given.
The forthcoming report on the rule of law will analyze progress in four areas: the judiciary, the fight against corruption, media freedom and pluralism, and broader institutional issues related to the law.
In the upcoming report, the EC is expected to confirm its position that the fight against corruption remains key to preserving the rule of law and citizens' trust in public institutions, and that the overall approach to the fight against corruption should include a combination of preventive and punitive measures.
These documents also evaluate the work of media regulators. Last year, some countries (Hungary, Slovenia, Poland) were criticized for "insufficient safeguards against undue political influence on the appointment process or the functioning of regulatory bodies".
Also, one of the segments covered in the reports relates to looking at the "media ownership structure". | BGNES
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