PM: Croatia will honour EAW, nobody will evade justice

Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Tuesday that Croatia would honour all its commitments from the European Union accession treaty and the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), and that nobody, "not even those whose names are being mentioned," would evade justice.

"We will honour all our commitments by the letter of the treaty and by the letter of the arrest warrant," Milanovic told a press conference after meeting with Macedonian PM Nikola Gruevski.

"Croatia is honoring the arrest warrant, having extradited more than 30 people, and nobody, not even those whose names are being mentioned, will evade a process of justice, be it investigation or indictment, either in Croatia or Sweden or Germany," said Milanovic. "Anyone insinuating that criminals from the past are being protected will have to explain that," he added.

"I won't let Croatia be used to wipe the floor with. We are a state, not a bird reserve. We're not doing anything that is wrong or immoral," the PM said.

Milanovic said that Croatia had proposed delaying the application of the law for ten months for internal political reasons, as had been the case with the Czech Republic and Slovenia. "Those for whom this is not enough will have to make an effort to explain where the problem lies because no one is being protected. This is a 99.9% internal affair and a rather traumatic issue for Croatia."

Milanovic said that people who had disgraced Croatia for the next 20 years were the same ones that were now concerned about Croatia's reputation and credibility.

He noted that on June 28, when the law was amended, the Croatian version of the EAW was fully complied with, but that in the meantime it turned out that it had been mistranslated, published in the EU Official Journal and corrected only at the end of August. "It was only then that the Croatian version was aligned with the original version."

The PM said that Croatia would not suffer any financial damage. "These are situations when one needs to show one's strength of character," he said, stressing that there was no danger and that Croatia would join the Schengen area.

"The Schengen facility, in our conviction, is completely outside Article 39 of the Accession Treaty. The Commission, or rather Commissioner Reding, has no right to touch that, but the Commission may use force," Milanovic said, stressing that Croatia would suffer no financial consequences whatsoever. "Yesterday there was talk of hundreds of millions, and I'm telling you it will be zero," he said.

Commenting on the role of Consumer Protection Commissioner Neven Mimica in the decision of the college of commissioners, Milanovic said that Mimica "is not a Croatian member of the Commission and is accountable to the Commission President and the European Parliament. If I were in his shoes, I would exclude myself from this, but that's my opinion."

"Anyway, we expect support from those who know the truth, and the truth is that Croatia is a democratic state and the Croatian government observes the highest European standards in protecting human and minority rights. That costs politically and is very often to our detriment from the point of view of day to day politics. I'm surprised that there has been no support from those members of the Commission who have always had comments on everything that concerns human rights as was the case during the accession talks. But that is what we will do ourselves, that is our greatest credibility towards Europe," Milanovic said.

(Hina)



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