Croatia will pay special attention to unblocking the start of EU accession negotiations for North Macedonia and Albania at the Zagreb summit meeting scheduled for early May, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Monday at the meeting of Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC) in Zagreb.

The meeting of the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC) was convened in Zagreb in preparation for a plenary session of COSAC that will be held in Zagreb on May 24-26.

At the meeting, Plenkovic presented the priorities of Croatia’s six-month rotating presidency of the EU and reiterated that the most important tasks facing the Union in the coming months include the next seven-year MFF budget, enlargement, the Conference on the Future of Europe, and an agreement on future relations with Great Britain.

He announced that the Zagreb summit in May that will be dedicated to enlargement and will focus especially on deblocking the situation that North Macedonia and Albania found themselves in at the European Council in October.

Europe will never be as open as it was in the 1990s, now we have a carefully elaborated process of enlargement, Plenkovic said, adding it was unfair that North Macedonia has been put on hold for the beginning of accession negotiations after it had changed its name and constitution.

Plenkovic says that for now it does not seem that Great Britain will request an extension of the transition period which expires at the end of the year when an agreement on future relations with the EU should be concluded.

After Great Britain exits the EU on January 31, as part of its presidency, Croatia needs to present a motion by the end of February for the adoption of a formal negotiation framework of future relations with London.