Croatia on Thursday officially became an associate member of the world's biggest research centre, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern), at a ceremony in Zagreb.

The agreement which gave Croatia the status of associate member was signed by CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti and the Croatian Science Minister, Blazenka Divjak.

Numerous Croatian researchers have worked and continue to work at CERN, and signing the agreement was the culmination of that cooperation, Gianotti said.

Cern is a European physics science centre operating the largest particle physics laboratory in the world as well as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a major test site built underground on the French-Swiss border.

Cern was established in 1954, and one of its 12 founding members was Yugoslavia, before it left the organisation in 1961. To this day, Serbia is the only ex-Yugoslav country to become full member of Cern, in December last year, while Slovenia became an associate member in 2017.

Minister Divjak spoke of some of the possibilities that would open up for Croatia as an associate member, including access for Croatian researchers to huge databases and the exchange of knowledge, research, and ideas.

Cern also provides an opportunity for Croatian high-tech companies to participate in tenders worth more than €2 billion annually – from construction of parts for accelerators and similar laboratory equipment to development of robotics and solutions for the analysis of huge quantities of data and artificial intelligence, Divjak said.

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