After an EU summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic commented on the topics discussed at the meeting.

“Yesterday’s meeting was on Brexit, today’s scheduled meeting was on security and migrations… the topic of migrations is extremely important for us, I spoke about everything related to the Western Balkans route. Some 5,000 migrants (entered Croatia) in 2017, 20 percent more in 2018. Our cooperation with neighbouring countries is good, we have excellent cooperation with Frontex, their aircraft is stationed in (the Croatian coastal city of) Zadar…,” Plenkovic said, adding it was very important that the EU protects its external borders at the source of the problem.

“We are contributing adequately to solving this problem and we have supported the efforts to revise the European asylum system,” he added.

He also talked about the state of affairs in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the October 7 general election, in which Zeljko Komsic was elected as member of Bosnia’s Presidency from among the Croat people. Major Croat parties in the country said his election was not legitimate because he was not elected by Croats, but by Bosniaks.

The state Constitution, which stems from the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA) which ended the 1992-95 armed conflict in Bosnia, stipulates that Presidency consists of one Bosniak, one Croat and one Serb member, with the Serb elected in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska (RS), and the Bosniak and the Croat members in the Federation (FBiH), the entity these two ethnic groups share.

The state Constitution stipulates that Presidency consists of one Bosniak, one Croat and one Serb member. There is no mention of what ethnic group must vote for what candidate.

“I explained we were worried about the situation in which the Bosniaks, who are a majority people in the Federation (of Bosnia and Herzegovina) elected a representative of the Croat people in the Presidency against the will of Bosnian Croats. We explained the spirit of Dayton (Agreement) was betrayed, that the scenario was not good neither for the functioning of Bosnia and Herzegovina, nor for the three constitutent peoples (Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs), in this case for the Croat people,” Plenkovic said.

He added that he appeals to EU members to help political actors in Bosnia to adopt a new election law which would be just and, in line with the Constitutional rulings, prevent the manipulation of the rules which led to this situation.

“The majority understood the depth of the issue only after my presentation. (Bulgarian Prime Minister) Borisov, (Hungarian Prime Minister) Orban, (Spanish Prime Minister) Sanchez, (French President) Macron, (EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs) Mogherini, supported the intervention. We concluded there will be a discussion which will help EU more actively participate in what was missed in this election cycle. I said this as a representative of a country which is the most active supporter of Bosnia’s EU future, as every Croatian government has been for the past 30 years,” Plenkovic said.

He said he would discuss the bigger picture with President of the European Council Donald Tusk and Mogherini.

“We will talk more, Bosnia and Herzegovina isn’t the only topic. I am interested in how the High Representative views a series of topics in our neighbourhood – what will happen following the referendum in Macedonia which didn’t see a sufficient number of voters going to the poll, how the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo is going and with President Tusk about several topics that aren’t related just to that,” Plenkovic said.

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