Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-30-Speech-3-099-000"
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"en.20111130.15.3-099-000"2
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".
Madam President, this House has been supporting Croatia for more than 30 years. As a young assistant of Otto von Habsburg at the start of the 1980s, I was involved in bringing the first Croatian exiles here under the leadership of Ms Dončević and in enabling the first civil rights campaigners led by Vladimir Šeks to come to Strasbourg and to talk to us about the desire of the Croatian people for freedom and about the human rights situation there.
We played a part in the process of introducing democracy during the first free elections in 1990. For a year, we did everything we could to draw the attention of the states to the fact that it was necessary to negotiate with Belgrade about the peaceful transformation of Yugoslavia into a loose confederation, which Croatia was prepared to do. This failed as a result of resistance from the militaristic communists and as a result of the lack of involvement of many countries in the Western world. It was right that the European Parliament finally asserted itself in early 1992 and that the European Union recognised the independence of Croatia.
Since then, Croatia has been moving towards joining the European Union by introducing reforms and taking part in negotiations. It is a Central European country which is extremely well prepared. In fact, it is one of the best prepared candidate countries that we have ever had. I would very much like to thank Mr Swoboda for enabling us, along with all the other rapporteurs and shadow rapporteurs over the years, to ensure that it was this House which was responsible for removing many of the unfair obstacles placed in Croatia’s path.
This country has been constantly blocked in a way which was completely inacceptable and which sometimes involved artificial measures. The natural accession process is difficult enough, because we have tried imposing stricter criteria on Croatia than any other candidate country has ever had to meet. Croatia has overcome these obstacles in style. Therefore, I am already looking forward to the day when observers from Croatia will help us here in the European Parliament to give the European Union a new impetus. I am looking forward to hearing Croatian spoken in this House."@en1
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"Živjeli Hrvatska!"1
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