Plenkovic: Croatia will never put up barbed wire towards Bosnia

He was speaking of migration at a meeting with foreign correspondents who arrived in Zagreb from Brussels on the occasion of Croatia's presidency of the European Union.

Some of our neighbouring EU member states have put up physical barricades and barbed wire. We haven't opted for that because we have natural barriers such as the Danube and the Sava rivers, mountains and forests, Plenkovic told a Dutch journalist when asked about the migrant policy Croatia would advocate during the presidency.

He said Bosnia was a neighbouring and friendly country with which Croatia shared many links and that barbed wire would not be a good political message for bilateral relations.

Addressing some 60 foreign journalists, Plenkovic said Croatians lived in many places on the other side of the border and that as prime minister he would never opt for building a barrier between Croatians.

He said it was necessary to stop illegal migration and reform the Dublin Regulation, adding that migration was the issue which, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, had changed the political mood in Europe the most.

Asked whether a country accused of beating and shooting at migrants, stealing from them and returning them from Zagreb to Bosnia, could propose a reform of the migration policy, Plenkovic said those were allegations and not facts, and that Croatia had chosen to invest in the police instead of barbed wire.

"We are looking at every humanitarian aspect. We have no proof of what you are saying, except two shooting incidents which occurred by accident inside Croatian territory. But that was accidental and it is not the official policy or the intention of the police," Plenkovic said, adding that every complaint about the work of security forces was properly checked.

Asked if trade disputes between the EU and the US would spill over onto the transatlantic alliance, Plenkovic replied that he believed there was common sense on both sides of the ocean, enough to avoid an escalation of those disputes.

He said the UK's exit from the EU, set for the end of January, was the right time for the Conference on the Future of Europe, with which Democracy and Demography Commissioner Dubravka Suica of Croatia would be tasked.

A nuclear power and permanent member of the Security Council is leaving, and this is the moment for the EU to see what it must do to gain bigger support among its citizens, Plenkovic said.

As for countries which want to join the EU, he said that Croatia, as a country in this part of Europe, felt a responsiblity for their European journey.

After talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, Plenkovic said he believed that France could change its opinion by the time the Zagreb summit on enlargement is held in May. Last October, France was the most vocal opponent to opening accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania.

He said Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi was working on a document which could amend the accession negotiations methodology, which could satisfy France.

European Council President Charles Michel and the entire European Commission with Ursula von der Leyen at the helm is coming to Zagreb on Thursday.