Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Friday that the policy of reconciliation has no alternative and added that the "process of the relations between the Croats and the Serbs in Croatia must be upgraded systematically."

“I believe that reconciliation has no alternative,” the Croatian PM said while he was walking in the commemorative procession through Vukovar on the occasion of the Remembrance Day.

Asked whether decisions have already been made about the removal of the plates in the Cyrillic script from official institutions in the city since the last census shows that the share of the ethnic Serbs has fallen below a third, which is a requirement for a community to be a dual language city, Plenkovic responded that the decisions to that effect are within the remit of the ruling majority in the Vukovar City Council where his HDZ party is in the Opposition.

“I have not seen that the rights of Serbs here are an issue, and we will see what the city council will decide,” Plenkovic told N1.

He emphasised that the policies of his government are not divisive, recalling that the policy of his government is to include representatives of all the ethnic minorities in the ruling majority in the parliament.

He also recalled that recently the representative of ethnic Croats in Serbia, Tomislav Zigmanov, became Serbia’s minister for human and minority rights.

Those are the only possible steps that lead us in the right direction, he added.