Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic is travelling to Subotica on Friday to open Croatian House, the new headquarters of the Croatian minority, and this will be his first visit to Serbia in his term as prime minister.

Plenkovic is arriving in Subotica at the invitation of the president of the Croatian National Council (HNV), Jasna Vojnic, and the leader of the DSHV party of local Croats,  Tomislav Zigmanov.

The opening of Croatian House, whose construction was fully financed by Croatia’s government in the amount of €1.8 million, and the appointment of Zigmanov as Serbia’s minister for human and minority rights in October 2022 are perceived as signals that herald the improvement of the relations between the two neighbouring countries.

In attendance at the opening ceremony will be also Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, and the two premiers will hold talks.

In mid-June, Plenkovic said that a meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is not scheduled during his visit to Subotica.

Plenkovic and Brnabic are expected to discuss the status of respective minorities, economic cooperation, Serbia’s European Union membership aspirations as probably the issue of war casualties and persons who are still unaccounted-for since the 1991-1995 Homeland War and prosecution of war crimes.

Croatian ethnic community scaled down fivefold over last 60 years

In 1961, the ethnic Croatian community in Serbia numbered 200,000 members, and the 2022 population census shows that since then the number of local Croats was reduce fivefold to 39,107.

Those demographic losses are consequences of many “unfavourable economic factors in the recent history: assimilation policies, persecutions and departure of a significant number of local Croats from Vojvodina in the 1990s, the so called Bunjevci issue, anti-Croat sentiment in the Serbian society, Zigmanov said recently in a comment on demographic trends.

Mending fences

As for the fence-mending between Croatia and Serbia, apart from the appointment of Zigmanov as the minister in the Serbian government, also the unofficial visit of Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic during  the Christmas reception organised by the ethnic Serb leadership in Croatia (SNV) in early January, and Brnabic’s visit to the SNV assembly also in Zagreb in April were seen as indicators of better bilateral relations.

“As for the relations with Serbia, they are burdened by the recent past. We are burdened by the time of the Milosevic regime’s aggression on Croatia, when horrible crimes were committed, which are here, living with us,” Plenkovic said after the SNV Christmas reception in January.

Three messages

As for Croatian House that will include the headquarters of the HNV council, the office of the “Hrvatska Rijec” weekly newspaper of the Croat community in Serbia, as well as the institute culture and heritage of local Croats, the HNV chief Jasna Vojnić said that the event of the opening of that facilty sends out three messages.

One of them is that we are raising a monument in tribute to the 300-year-long presence of the ethnic Croatian community,  while the other is that Croats are being perceived as respected partners in this area, she said adding that the third message is the the Republic of Croatia stands behind the Croat minority in Serbia.