President Milanović: Croatia should not allow itself the luxury of disunity in foreign policy
“The situation is not good and calls for action. Indeed it calls for action, deliberate, smart and cold action, and not that variant of wisdom when you are wise and do nothing. It is precisely this kind of approach to problems that has led to the current state of Europe, its relations with the USA, which for decades has been the protector of Europe and its security, including ours. That is no longer the case. If it was not clear to anyone a month ago, then it probably has become clear to them in the past week. I think that as European states, we must first and foremost be guided by this fact and guideline. We have been here for centuries, and we will be here in the future. Almost all of our interests, our arrangements, our jobs and even our security are here,” the President of the Republic of Croatia Zoran Milanović stated today after a meeting with the President of the Republic of Slovenia Nataša Pirc Musar.
President Milanović is paying an official visit to the Republic of Slovenia at the invitation of the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Nataša Pirc Musar. This is the first official foreign trip by the Croatian President after the start of his second term as President of the Republic. Since he chose Slovenia for his first visit five years ago and met with former Slovenian President Pahor, President Milanović said that these visits to Slovenia are becoming tradition.
“I don’t think there’s any need to explain why – we are neighbours, good neighbours. In recent years, relations have been on a rising trajectory. We’ve had our ups and downs in recent years, but things are calming down and normalizing now. There are a few open issues, or issues that haven’t been fully resolved, but I won’t talk about them today because that’s the government’s job, first and foremost,” said the President.
He added that he and Slovenian President Pirc Musar discussed bilateral matters and what is weighing on all of us, the situation in Europe and the world, and the position “in which Europe finds itself, some would say in which the European Union, or rather its actors, the administration, has brought on itself”. “We did talk about that, you have to have an opinion and think actively. For me, the essence of this meeting is to talk about major issues that we can and must at least talk about if we cannot solve them,” President Milanović emphasized in a statement to the media.
President Milanović answered questions from journalists who were interested to know the position of the Republic of Croatia on sending European peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. “What 30,000 peacekeepers, where does that even exist? Let’s imagine that Russia agrees to that, and it won’t, and that already becomes a mortal danger for those who should go there. Perhaps Slovenian sons and daughters or Croatian? That number doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, those are safari armies, that’s reality. We don’t have that, and even if security and political conditions were in place, that number of people wouldn’t exist. This has been the topic of discussion in recent weeks as a hasty, nervous reaction to everything that US President Trump is doing. Until a month ago, we hadn’t heard about some 30,000 peacekeepers. If to this day you can’t fly to Kyiv, and have to go by train, then that clearly indicates the kind of influence that Russia has unfortunately. That’s the beginning and the end of these talks,” President Milanović noted.
“Croatia should not allow itself the luxury of disunity in foreign policy. It would be good if in Croatia we could agree on some matters. And in order to agree, we must first of all talk to see what we agree on and what we disagree on, and only then delegate that work to a lower level that can implement it operationally. Embarking into such major agreements at the level of advisers is impossible. The Prime Minister is not telling lies, but he may be wrong,” the President added.
Asked about the arbitration agreement with Slovenia, President Milanović said: “The positions are known. Slovenia ratified it, but Croatia does not recognize it. We agree on the content. What this arbitration, which Croatia has not recognized for a reason, determined seems okay to both us and Slovenia. The only thing we cannot agree on is the preamble, or how we arrived at the solution.”
Speaking about the situation in the world, he also mentioned the situation in Gaza and said that for most Croats what is happening there is unacceptable. “So, this is maniacal killing of helpless people who have no air defence, who do not have the latest Western electronic jamming systems and who are simply sitting ducks. Some people aren’t bothered by that, but this personally bothers me very much. Croatia has not recognized Palestine, while Slovenia has and that is the right thing to do, and I congratulate you,” said President Milanović at a press conference at the Presidential Palace.
President Milanović began his official visit to the Republic of Slovenia in Ljubljana’s Congress Square where a welcoming ceremony was held with military honours for the Croatian President and his spouse Sanja Musić Milanović. After the welcoming ceremony, President Milanović laid a wreath at the Memorial to the Victims of All Wars. A tête-à-tête meeting between the President of the Republic Zoran Milanović and the President of the Republic of Slovenia Nataša Pirc Musar followed in the Presidential Palace and a bilateral meeting between the delegations of the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Slovenia.
In the continuation of his official visit to the Republic of Slovenia, President Milanović held separate meetings with the Speaker of the National Assembly Urška Klakočar Zupančič and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia Robert Golob.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Tomislav Bušljeta, Dario Andrišek