Croatia Helps Montenegro’s EU Efforts

Montenegro and Croatia signed a partnership agreement, concluding the meeting on the optimistic note that regional co-operation will improve once the post-election atmosphere in Serbia “calms down“.The Foreign minister of Montenegro, Milan Rocen, and his Croatian counterpart, Vesna Pusic, signed on Tuesday in Podgorica a mutual agreement about a Euro-Atlantic partnership, which paves the way for further Croatian assistance to Montenegro’s EU and NATO accession.

Namely, the agreement gives Montenegro access to Croatian translations of the EU legislations adopted since 2009, adding to the already big pile of Croatian translations of earlier EU legal acts given to Montenegro.

After the meeting, Milan Rocen said that the mere fact that Montenegro is the first country in the region which Pusic visited as foreign minister, is the best evidence of the level of relations between the two friendly countries.

However, at the press conference questions from journalists mainly focused on more controversial issues, such as Monday’s presidential inauguration of Tomislav Nikolic in Serbia and Montenegro’s last month’s decision to open an embassy in Kosovo.

The Montenegrin president, Filip Vujanovic, said on Thursday that he would neither appoint an ambassador to Kosovo nor receive credentials from Kosovo’s ambassadors, until Montenegrins obtain the status of ethnic minority in Kosovo.

Rocen, however, said that an embassy might be opened without the president’s signature, at Charge D’Affairs level.

He said that it is a fact that Vujanovic was the sole head of state from the region to attend Nikolic’s inauguration in Belgrade.

“It just shows that Montenegro… has special interest for developing the best possible relations with Serbia”, he added.

Pusic said that Croatia has decided to wait for the post-electoral atmosphere in Serbia to “calm down”, and expressed expectations that, once it happens, a model of cooperation in the region will be found, because it is an obligation for all its leaders.

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