Meeting of the Igman initiative: "Cooperation in the region after Croatia's accession to the EU"

The need to strengthen cooperation on parliamentary level and utilizing positive experiences are the main points highlighted at the regional conference on "Cooperation in the region...

(Hina) The need to strengthen cooperation on parliamentary level and utilizing positive experiences are the main points highlighted at the regional conference on "Cooperation in the region after Croatia's accession to the EU" that took place in Zagreb, within the meeting of the Igman initiative.

First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia Vesna Pusić said that after the night in which Croatia became the 28th full member of the European Union, we have left behind 12 years of intensive work that has resulted with the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the EU.

"We worked and prepared for a long time, and for some time now we have been participating in the work of the European institutions, we only could not vote", said Minister Pusić and added that we are the "living example and proof that it is possible even in our region". "For Croatia and all the states in the region, the ability to stabilize our own region and accept responsibility for it is our only true added value in European and global relations", she said.

She recalled that throughout history our region was often the starting point of the destabilization of Europe at large, and if we have matured to accept the responsibility for the stabilization of the region, we are doing the European and global job. It of the utmost importance to our country and to the countries in the region to continue down this road, she said. EU membership is not just enlargement, but also consolidation of the European territory, and we shall continue to work on it, announced the Minister.

On behalf of the parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee, Igor Kolman said that the contribution of Croatia to the European Union will be strong support for its enlargement, although there is widespread enlargement fatigue under the influence of the economic crisis. Croatia will particularly support the states in the region in their joining the European Union, because the main goal is the reform of the institutions and the state to make them functional and at the service of citizens. That is what accession is about, said Kolman.

Former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić found that Croatian's accession to the EU would also urge the other states in the region to adopt the standards, which will be recognized. "The European Union is the most elite economic and political club of today", said Mesić. "Europe must join ranks because only that way it can be an important player in the world", he said. In his words, Europe must still work out some of its institutional problems so as not to have Greece or Spain repeat again, but – he said – these are all solvable problems.

Co-chairman of the Igman initiative for Croatia Zoran Pusić said that Croatia is aware that while joining the EU it still remains in the region and can choose between two roads: one is to be a country with 4.3 million people in an association with 500 million citizens at the verge and among the economically mist underdeveloped, or to be a country that will contribute to making this unusually important part of Europe a zone of peace and cooperation. Size and number will not matter then, but Croatia will be an important EU Member State, and the region will be an important part for EU enlargement, said Zoran Pusić.

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