Minister Gordan Jandroković on official visit to Portugal, met with Portuguese Foreign Minister Luís Amado

The bilateral relations are constantly on the rise and devoid of outstanding issues, ministers Jandroković and Amado agreed. The Portuguese Republic is continually supporting the Republic of Croatia along its way to the Euro-Atlantic structures, especially in transferring Portugal’s experiences with the process. Further confirmation of the very good bilateral relations is the Memorandum on Cooperation between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, signed by the ministers today. This Memorandum, said Minister Jandroković, will provide basis for the holding of regular political consultations on the regional and international issues of mutual interest between representatives of the two ministries.

Talking about the economic cooperation, in which there is room for enhancement, the ministers expressed interest in transferring Portugal’s knowledge about and experience with the public-private partnership. The ministers also discussed business cooperation in managing the projects pertaining to the Port of Rijeka, as well as the visits to Croatia by the Portuguese tourist, which have showed an increase of 10% in relation to the last year.

Talking about Croatia’s NATO accession, Minister Jandroković told Minister Amado that the process of ratifying the Enlargement Protocol had been completed in all of the NATO members, while the remaining few of the national ratification instruments are expected to be deposited at the State Department soon, so that Croatia could become a full-fledged NATO member at the Strasbourg/ Kehl Summit in April.

Regarding the current state of Croatia’s EU negotiations, Minister Jandroković reiterated that Croatia is determined to maintain the same tempo in carrying out the necessary reforms in order to close the negotiations by end-2009. He explained in detail Croatia’s positions on the European Commission’s initiative and the mediation proposal, pointing out that bilateral issues should not enter the negotiation process, but should be solved before the International Court of Justice. Agreeing with Croatia’s arguments, Minister Amado said he was convinced said issues would not affect the dynamic of the negotiation process.

On March 10th 2009, Minister Jandroković is to meet with Portuguese Parliament Speaker Jaime Gama, after which he is leaving for Brussels, where he will meet with European Commission’s Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn and Slovenian Foreign Minister Samuel Žbogar.