Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, received yesterday in Madrid her Croatian counterpart, Gordan Grlic Radman, who thanked the support given by Spain to his “strategic goal” of entering the Schengen zone.
“There are still no concrete dates, it will depend on what the Commission decides, but what we are very clear about is that from Spain we will continue to support Croatia’s efforts” to enter the Schengen zone, said González Laya during a joint press conference with Grlic Radman at the ministerial headquarters of the Palacio de Viana.
“We are grateful for Spain’s support for Croatia’s strategic goal of joining the Schengen zone”, said the Croatian minister, who yesterday visited Spain for the first time since taking office in July 2019. “Croatia applied to join Schengen in 2015 and the Commission gave the green light in October 2019”, which means that “Croatia meets all the technical requirements to be part of the Schengen zone”, he continued. “Croatia is already ready to enter, it already fulfills the obligations, there is no problem in this, and now it is the member states that have to make the political decision”, he warned.
The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, and the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council announced last March, during a meeting of interior ministers, that Croatia already fulfills the 281 recommendations set by the Schengen Agreement to be part of this passport-free zone of the European Union. Following this announcement, the Croatian Prime Minister, Andrej Plenković, stated that his country’s accession could be finalized in the second half of 2024 and even assured that Croatia could also join the Eurozone that same year.
On the other hand, González Laya also expressed yesterday Spain’s support for Croatia’s entry into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and reiterated, like her Croatian colleague, her support for the process of accession of North Macedonia and Albania to the EU. The Minister also insisted on the “importance of the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade for the EU accession of Serbia, Montenegro and the territory of Kosovo” and on the need to give “more attention and political support to Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
At the bilateral level, the two ministers pledged to boost economic and trade relations and stressed the importance of tourism in the two countries, “a very important sector that represents 13% of GDP in Spain and more than 20% in Croatia”, said Gonzalez Laya, who said that the two countries want the COVID digital green certificate to be approved “as soon as possible”. For his part, Gordan Grlic Radman -who took advantage of his stay in Madrid to meet with the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Zurab Pololikashvili– assured that Croatia is a “very popular tourist destination” and that his country is working to become a “safe destination” after the impact of the pandemic.
