President Milanović: I Cannot Imagine Parliament Would Go on Recess after Being Constituted
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović participated in the 30th meeting of Lider magazine’s Club of Exporters held at the Vetropack Straža company in the town of Hum na Sutli, after which he took questions from reporters who were interested in his position on announcements of the possible purchase of Hungarian energy company MOL’s stake in its Croatian peer INA.
“The first 25% is one story. What happened in 2007 and 2008, as it’s known… that’s another story. That was a very irresponsible deed by the former Government and political structure. After that you can only control, but you no longer have management instruments. You no longer have real power; you don’t make strategic decisions in an important industry. And then three or four years ago the Government says it will buy back INA and nothing has happened since.”
He also commented on the Government’s meeting with consultants hired to assess the value of INA, warning that the meeting with consultants comes just before the election. The President, however, is interested in something else: “The only thing I’m interested in is how much the last consultants have been paid to date. Because in my opinion, that’s wasted money. The contract was worth €9 million. True, some projects can’t be done without consultants, but the question is whether the intention ever existed. I see the police are checking various studies that were done seven, eight years ago, when I was Prime Minister, studies that cost €50,000 each, and the former officials are being reported for those studies which are now being assessed as unnecessary. Given that in this case we are talking about millions of euros for one action that is not even being performed and is being paid from the Croatian budget, I want to know if those expenses are necessary. If anything had happened I could comment, but two weeks before the election it is distasteful to discuss this.”
Asked by reporters whether, since he has been President, someone from the Russian company Rosneft tried to contact him, President Milanović said: “I know one man at Rosneft, it’s the largest oil company, it’s state-owned, headed by one of President Putin’s closest associates. They didn’t contact me, why would they do so now. They associated me with people to whom I had no connection even while I was in the executive authority. As far as I know, Rosneft, or any other large oil company, did not even think about buying INA. The Croatian Government announced it would do something; it has not done anything and maybe it is better that way. I did not attack the Government over the decision that Croatian oil be transported to Hungarian refineries because I did not see the economic aspect. As long as Croatian refineries are working, that’s good. If the Sisak Refinery is transformed – as was announced by INA and with the considerable aid of EU funds – into a plant where biofuel will be produced, that’s great. And that’s what we’re waiting to see. As long as Croatian refineries owned by INA or MOL are operating, that’s good enough for me. And in that regard, I do not question where a barrel of Croatian oil, extracted from Croatia, has ended up. This [situation] may be beneficial for the entire corporation and as a result I have never joined such attacks.”
President Milanović said that he supported the initiative calling for the prompt adoption of the Law on the Reconstruction of Zagreb, which is advocated by the Možemo! coalition, and which initiated the signing of a petition requesting of the President to convene an extraordinary session of the Croatian Parliament after it is constituted post-election. “I cannot imagine that some authority would constitute the Parliament and then go on recess. I would be shocked if that happened. There is no chance that they will form the Government and then go on holiday. I don’t think that will happen,” said President Milanović.
Reporters asked the President to comment on the statement by Branko Bačić in which he said that President Milanović, if he were the Prime Minister, would have surely gone on holiday after the elections. “I would go diving with the $5,000 Omega watch he received as a gift from ACI,” President Milanović replied ironically. “I was elected President by the will of the voters. He doesn’t have to love me, but he shouldn’t talk nonsense,” he added.
Commenting on the statement by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković – who said that his Hungarian colleague Viktor Orban assured him that he had no pretensions towards Croatian territory, after the memorial depicting Greater Hungary caused tensions between the two countries – President Milanović said that this time he didn’t speak with anyone. “I have a history of telephone conversations with Orban. He assured me as well that everything was fine,” said President Milanović, adding that he “cannot understand why things are the way they are, because there is no personal relationship. We know who Orban is and what he advocates, and it’s nothing good. I would remain indifferent if Orban and his team were not the only ones to display such behaviour. Nobody in Europe behaves like that when it comes to historical borders, sensitive topics. From Hungary, all we hear about is being deprived.”
President Milanović believes that such statements are not reasonable and that no one in Europe today should have territorial pretensions. “Not only is it improper, it is also not reasonable. We don’t live in a colony on the moon or in the Asian steppes, but on a continent with historical trauma, and we all ended up behind particular borders. There are also some people in Croatia who believe that because Horvat is the most common surname in Hungary, Budapest should be a Croatian city. But that is nonsense, that’s not the way to build relations with your neighbours. Hungary is not a big country. If anyone needs to complain because they were left cramped in a small space after the war, then that is the Germans. But you don’t hear that from Germany,” said the President of the Republic.
