Croatia has no luck persuading EU to support its blockade

Croatia has no luck persuading EU to support its blockade

According to the Croatian daily Vecernji List, in the document, the country's Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs explained in detail the three demands.

It was previously revealed that these concern the treatment of the Croat minority in Serbia, Serbia's cooperation with the The Hague, and Serbia's jurisdiction over war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.

The newspaper is citing an EU source who said that "these arguments are yet to convince any of the 27 countries to side with Croatia."

The daily also said it learned unofficially that during Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic's stay in Bratislava from Friday to Sunday, in informal conversations with presidents and other participants in the GLOBSEC forum she "tried to explain Croatia's arguments in the dispute with Serbia over chapter 23 - but also did not receive the desired support."

Ivan Jakovcic, a Croatian MEP from the Istrian Democratic Assembly, is openly critical of the path taken by the Croatian government in the EU Council.

Jakovcic said that he "on several occasions stressed that the blockade of Serbia can only be counterproductive for Zagreb."

"On the one hand because each such move is seen as a bilateral problem between two Balkan countries, and on the other, because Serbia is today important to the EU and well positioned. The question of jurisdiction of its judicial system and the question of Serbia's cooperation with the Hague Tribunal is a wider question, and I think it is unnecessary for us to waste our time and reputation," said Jakovcic.

He added that the fact Zagreb has not secured a single ally for such demands supports his opinion.

Jakovcic added that "the rights of the Croatian minority in Serbia should be insisted on," and noted it was "thanks to him that Croatian became an official language in the Assembly of Vojvodina" - and that he personally "has experience in discovering the stolen cultural treasures from Vukovar."

The Zagreb daily also writes that Croatia's Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs yesterday declined to comment on whether Foreign Minister Miro Kovac had received an invitation to travel to Berlin to explain Croatia's position on this issue in the German parliament.

Meanwhile, the political pressure on Zagreb intensified after German Bundestag's Committee on the Affairs of the European Union chair Gunther Krichbaum said Berlin had no understanding for the Croatian blockade, with Deutsche Welle reporting recently that it was this committee that had invited Kovac to visit in May.

Croatia's position, especially that of Kovac himself, is interesting because while serving as the Croatian ambassador to Germany, he on many occassions complained about the Slovenian blockade of Croatia's EU accession process over a border dispute between the two countries.

"He had our support then, and he promised that Croatia will not behave like Slovenia. And now we see how it behaves," Deutsche Welle quoted an unnamed source from the Bundestag.