08 11 2007 Zagreb _ The publication of the European Commission’s annual progress report on Croatia on Tuesday provided one of the key subjects for an election debate on Zagreb-based Radio 101.
Speaking for the governing centre-right Croatian Democratic Union, Foreign Minister Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, noted that the report was broadly positive.
“Of course, the challenges ahead of us are stressed, but we expected that”, Grabar-Kitarovic said about the report a few hours after its publication.
“It is about long term reforms which can’t be carried out overnight. But I have to say that even those parts, which stress the challenges before us, are more positive when compared with last year’s report”, Kitarovic said.
For the main opposition Social Democrats, their former Foreign Minister Neven Mimica said that this year's report was more carefully phrased so that it would not be seen as influencing the outcome of the parliamentary elections, due on November 25.
“Over the past four years this current government has had the initiative, and could have made sure that this report would be, without any smoothening out, more full of results and show greater progress”, Mimica said.
The leader of the opposition Croatian People’s Party, Vesna Pusic, said that the report was about problems that Croatian citizens also underlined in opinion polls when asked which issues mattered to them.
“In some way it is the same as last year. The same remarks, the same situation”, Pusic said.
“We haven’t moved much. This is only a reminder of what people are telling us all the time about what the problems are and what the government’s tasks should be”, said Pusic.
Croatia, which began accession negotiations with the EU two years ago, is hoping to become the next country to join the 27-nation bloc.
No comments:
Post a Comment