Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-12-Speech-2-255"
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"en.20001212.10.2-255"2
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". – Mr President, I am delighted to be able to comment on the excellent report by the honourable gentleman, Mr Baltas – produced, as several honourable gentlemen have said, with considerable expedition – on the Commission's feasibility study for a stabilisation and association agreement with Croatia.
In the last year Croatia has embarked boldly and decisively on the road to Europe, but there remains, despite recent progress, some way to go. We will need to see a strong continuing commitment on the part of Croatia and on the part of other governments in the region to refugee return – a point which a couple of honourable Members referred to.
Above all we will need to see continuing economic and institutional reform, the establishment of a genuinely free economy, reform of property law, the strengthening of the independence of the judiciary and the protection of the rights of minorities. There will also need to be serious reform of the media, with a real effort to create a genuinely open and pluralistic media environment, living up to the highest professional standards of impartiality and independence, especially in television.
So we will continue to need the support of this Parliament as we urge our Croatian friends to press on with these reforms, many of which will bring pain before the gains are evident. We welcome Parliament's support so far, not least on the important question of the legal base for the stabilisation and association agreements. This is an important point for us and we will, I hope, be able to count on Parliament's support when we come back to consult you formally once we have negotiated the agreement. The conclusion of the stabilisation and association agreement will, of course, be subject to the assent of this Parliament.
With the start of these negotiations, Croatia has embarked on a new era in its relations with the European Union. Croatia has won many friends in Europe for the role it has played in the last year and for the progress it has achieved. Of course, in many respects the hard part is only just beginning, but I have every confidence that the people of Croatia are equal to the challenge, equal to the difficult path of reform, the path to Europe that now lies ahead. We in the European Commission look forward to helping Croatia to meet that challenge and to helping Croatia along that road.
As I said at the outset, this year began with the people of Croatia and their new democratic government lighting a candle. I think it was remarkably important for the whole region. We owe it to Croatia to give the government and people of Croatia every help in the years ahead and we are extremely grateful to the honourable Member for his wise advice in ensuring that we pursue this route.
This has of course been a historic year for south-east Europe. It was Croatia – we should not forget – that got things moving with its elections under a year ago. So I am delighted that we celebrate the end of the year by launching negotiations with Croatia for a stabilisation and association agreement.
We initiated those negotiations appropriately enough at the Zagreb Summit a fortnight ago and the first full negotiating session takes place on Monday in Brussels. We hope to make swift progress in these negotiations and to be able to conclude them rapidly. How rapidly depends to some extent not just on us but on the Croatian negotiating team who are extremely well prepared. I have to say that, on the basis of Croatia's performance this year, I have every confidence that we will be able to set a brisk pace. Certainly that is what Croatia has done during the course of the last months: setting an example to its neighbours, demonstrating how rapidly it is possible to turn a country's political fortunes around, given sufficient vision and political courage.
I want to pay a warm tribute to Croatia's leaders and to her people for what they have achieved. Croatia has, for example, bravely transformed its relations with The Hague, based on the wise assertion of her President that it is only by establishing individual guilt that a country can truly be absolved of collective guilt. Wise advice, applicable not just in Croatia but wherever war crimes are alleged.
As Mrs Stenzel pointed out, Croatia has joined the PFP and WTO, and it has taken on a host of other international obligations. The new government has made radical changes to Croatia's relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, clearly distancing itself from extremists in Herzegovina and instituting a more open financial relationship with the Croat components of the federation army. It has pioneered free trade agreements with FYROM and Slovenia and now with Bosnia and Herzegovina. It played an extremely helpful role in supporting the democratically elected government of Montenegro in withstanding pressure from the Milosevic regime.
At the same time, the government has started to make real reforms at home – politically and economically – that have led us to conclude that Croatia would be able to uphold the substantial obligations which a stabilisation and association agreement entails. Last month, as the House knows, Croatia hosted, with extremely impressive efficiency and diplomatic finesse, the historic Zagreb Summit. I do not think that is a bad record for a year. So I am pleased, if not surprised, that Parliament backs our judgement that it was right to proceed quickly to begin these negotiations with Croatia.
I share many of the observations in the report. I strongly agree, for example, that we need substantially to increase our financial support for Croatia under the CARDS regulation. We have a team of officials in Croatia this week to look at programming for next year. I strongly endorse Parliament's view. I know that it is the strong view of the Croatian Government that countries participating in the stabilisation and association process must be judged on an individual basis on their own merits.
The agreements must be tailored to their particular circumstances and adjusted to the rate of progress that they have made. That is certainly our approach, and the speed with which we have adjusted our policy towards Croatia in recent months testifies to that. We also naturally want to see countries participating in the stabilisation and association process taking the lead not just in establishing closer relations with the European Union but with each other too.
This is not – and I want to emphasise this point – a sort of back-door attempt to try and recreate Yugoslavia. It is an underlining in our relations with these countries of what has been our own experience. We coped with appalling political division. We coped with turmoil by coming together, by trying to work together economically and politically. It should not come as a surprise to countries which want a better relationship with us, which want a closer relationship with us, which want to join us in the European family, when we insist on exactly the same for them."@en1
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