Skopje, 11 November 2022 (MIA) – Deputy PM for European Affairs and Chief Negotiator with the European Union, Bojan Marichikj, is heading Friday the negotiating team to Brussels for the first meeting of the bilateral screening within Chapter 5 – Public Procurement. Members of the Chapter 5 working group will present the Macedonian legislative framework to the European Commission experts and the level of alignment with the EU law. The Ministry of Finance’s Public Procurement Bureau is the competent institution for this chapter, and the working group is led by the Bureau’s state advisor Aleksandar Argirovski. North Macedonia’s screening process began with the explanatory screening meetings on September 15. One of the main goals of the screening is to identify the differences between the candidate-country’s legislation and the EU Acquis in each of the negotiating chapters. Afterwards, the country is expected to demonstrate whether it can incorporate the EU law in a certain chapter and harmonize the detected differences in the legislation or it intends to ask for certain transitional periods for the purpose of full harmonization and implementation of the legislation. The explanatory screenings of North Macedonia and Albania developed in parallel but the countries are now separated for the bilateral screening. According to the EC calendar, the screening process for the Republic of North Macedonia is expected to last until November 2023.