Croatian members of the European Parliament agree that Croatia and Italy should continue strengthening their relationship, with some of them calling on the likely next Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to distance herself from her statement in which she expressed claims on Croatian territory.
The Croatian MEPs told Hina that the two countries should continue building their good relations, in particular, because Italy is one of Croatia’s most important trading partners.
“Croatia should have the best possible relationship with Italy,” Social Democrat Tonino Picula says, adding that Meloni certainly cannot get the EU’s support for the territorial claims she had made while in the opposition.
“We have seen the position Europe takes on those that want to change borders by force. Vladimir Putin was very much mistaken in his expectation that the West would be disunited, that the EU would continue to get weaker and that he would cause fragmentation of NATO,” Picula said.
Ladislav Ilcic, vice-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists, the political group in the European Parliament of which Meloni is also a member, said that her statement from 2014 “does not present a realistic and substantial threat to Croatia in that she would now claim Istria and Dalmatia.”
“Croatia is surrounded by countries which had or still have certain territorial claims on it. But we cannot break up our relationships because of that. We need to cooperate with all our neighbours, while our security will primarily depend on ourselves alone,” Ilcic told Hina.
Digging in the past
Valter Flego (Istria Democratic Party/Renew Europe) says that relations between Croatia and Italy are excellent and should not be spoilt.
“I expect the future Prime Minister to stop digging in the bloody past, to get serious and realise what we in Istria and Croatia have done with regard to mutual respect, living together and looking forward,” he said.
Flego invited Meloni to visit Croatia and Istria “to see the absurdity of her ideas and to publicly distance herself from such statements because they can also be harmful to the Italian community in Croatia.”
Zeljana Zovko (Croatian Democratic Union/European People’s Party) said that Meloni should clearly distance herself from her statements if she wanted the good relations between Rome and Zagreb to continue, “just as she has distanced herself from Russia.”
Zovko said she had discussed the victory of the Italian right-wing coalition with Antonio Tajani, her colleague from the EPP and member of the Forza Italia party. She told him she “expects (Meloni) to express an opposite view to what we heard.”
“We hope that Italian foreign policy will be shaped by moderate centre-right parties,” Zovko said.
Tajani, too, caused a scandal in February 2019, when he served as President of the European Parliament, saying: “Long live Trieste, long live Italian Istria, long live Italian Dalmatia!” He later apologised.
Budapest, Warsaw and Rome vs. Brussels?
Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party attracted votes from Italians who were seeking change, unhappy with their living standards, increased prices and the energy crisis, Flego said.
“Meloni came to power first of all because she was basically the only true opposition in Italy. She got lucky, but that does not mean that Italy has turned sharply to the right. The right-wing parties were wise enough, not to say calculated, to unite, unlike the left,” Flego said.
Picula noted that Meloni had won voters’ trust because Italian voters “had exhausted their trust in the previous political combinations.”
The Brothers of Italy did not join the national unity government of the incumbent Prime Minister Mario Draghi but stayed in the opposition.
Ilcic said that the election results in the euro area’s third largest economy reflected Italian voters’ decision to “reject the left’s globalist policy that brought about this energy crisis.”
Since the victory of the right-wing parties in the Italian election there has been talk of a new alliance being formed by Italy, Hungary and Poland to fight against Brussels, primarily on rule of law issues.
“The Italian election will certainly be a game changer. The European Commission will certainly not be able any more to act as a bully against Hungary and Poland the way it has so far. The Commission has no reason to block the payment of funds to Hungary other than its own platitudes about the rule of law,” Ilcic said.
Zovko warned that “there should be no deviation from the rule of law”, regardless of the EU member state concerned, while Picula doubts that this would upset relations within the Union.
“I don’t believe that a pact would be created that would pose a serious threat to the present European unity in addressing the probably biggest existential threat that Europe has experienced since its beginning, and that’s Putin’s aggression against Ukraine,” Picula said.
