Croatia's Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Gordan Grlic-Radman on Tuesday said in Bled, Slovenia that Croatia and Slovenia advocate the EU's further enlargement to the Western Balkans and underscored that he hopes for a positive response from the European Commission on Croatia's accession to the Schengen Area.

Grlic-Radman was attending the Bled Strategic Forum and said that Croatia and Slovenia support EU enlargement to countries in the Western Balkans.

“We want peace and stability in that part of Europe and those countries have the right to a European future,” Grlic-Radman said.

Answering a question about the possibility of Slovenia blocking Croatia from joining the Schengen Area, Grlic-Radman said that he hoped for a positive response from the European Commission and that he would work so that Ljubljana does not block Zagreb.

“We are in the European family and we will certainly all show solidarity,” Grlic-Radman said, and added that he would endeavour to obtain the “green light from Slovenia.”

He commented on a recent informal meeting with his Slovenian counterpart Miro Cerar after which he told the N1 television station that in 2017 Cerar “almost accepted” an initiative proposed by Croatia’s Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on a protocol which would lead to a bilateral agreement on the border dispute, which Cerar later denied.

“We met on Krk island but we did not talk about anything else except about future cooperation,” Grlic-Radman said briefly.