MP Nino Raspudic (Bridge) asked Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic in Parliament on Wednesday whether he was in contact with Marija Pejčinovic-Buric, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and whether Croatia would respond to the statement by a "low-level Council of Europe bureaucrat" that it was time for Bosnia and Herzegovina to move to a modern system of government that is not based on constituent peoples.

“As for Pejcinovic-Buric and her views as the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, you will have to ask her that,” Plenkovic replied, adding that while serving as Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs she had implemented Croatia’s foreign policy which is more than clear when it comes to the rights and status of the Croats as a constituent people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “All our diplomatic initiatives that we have with the relevant stakeholders concern respect for the rights of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

Plenkovic stressed that Croatia’s position “is clear and stable and will not change.”

“Our position is that the key issue of importance to the cohesion of Bosnia and Herzegovina is to change its electoral legislation, which should be the result of an agreement by political parties and institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and which should ensure fair elections and legitimate representation, in particular when it comes to elections in the Federation entity,” the prime minister said.

Raspudić noted that the Croatian Parliament Committee on Croats Abroad had written to Pejcinović-Buric over the Council of Europe’s statement about Bosnia and Herzegovina and had received a lecture instead of an answer, to which Plenkovic replied that he had not seen the letter and repeated that Croatia would always support the equal and constituent status of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and insist on changing the electoral legislation.

“Today Pejcinovic-Buric represents not just Croatia, she is the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, and the fact that Croatia has a Secretary General is a huge success,” Plenkovic said.

Unhappy with the answer, Raspudic said that Croatia should respond to the Council of Europe because “abolishing the constituent status is obviously their policy.”

“It is disastrous that for the sake of her own career, even if she received 300,000 euro annually, she can be one of the political gravediggers of her own people,” Raspudic said.