The "Central European Summer Ball"

Yesterday, HINA, the Croatian News Agency, published a piece of news under the heading “Slovenian Prime Minister – support to Croatia conditioned by succession” from the meeting of the Slovenian Prime Minister Anton Rop and the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. HINA transmits the statement of Prime Minister Rop in which he said that Slovenia would support the entry of the Republic of Croatia into the EU under the condition that it successfully terminated the succession process of the former Yugoslavia. The said position was also transmitted by today’s Delo.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs considers this statement by the Slovenian Prime Minister as inappropriate. At all bilateral meetings, the Slovenian side gave support to the Republic of Croatia for joining the EU without reserve. There has never been any mention of the possibility to connect the support to Croatia with the previous termination of the succession process.

Croatia was among the first to initiate the ratification procedure of the Agreement, but halted with it when it was established that over half billion USD are missing. The Republic of Croatia wishes to terminate the process of the succession of the former Yugoslavia in good faith. This topic and process are traumatic for all Croatian citizens, especially because of the war waged on the Croatian territory.

During the past two years, Croatia has put a great deal of effort and opened the possibility for cooperation with the successor states. There were many attempts to establish facts and to remove obstacles to the ratification. Together with other successor states, the Republic of Croatia has requested data from the National Bank of Yugoslavia and other banks in order to establish who disposed with the funds and to whose benefit.

The Croatian Government has recently decided to initiate a procedure against LHB Frankfort, a joint bank in Germany, in the majority ownership of Ljubljanska banka, which withheld data on missing 67 M USD.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs evaluates that the statement of Prime Minister Rop on the need to speedily terminate the succession procedure puts under question the readiness of the Republic of Slovenia to bring light to the missing funds of the former Yugoslavia. This does not contribute to speedier resolution of the succession issues. The succession issues may only be resolved once all the facts have been established and conditions created for continuing the ratification of the Agreement in the Republic of Croatia, based on which the final distribution of the property of the former Yugoslavia is to be made.

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