Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Monday that surplus gas sales at extremely low prices amounted to criminal negligence for which someone should be held politically responsible.

Milanovic was speaking to the press in Bjelovar after a send-off ceremony for the 12th Croatian contingent serving within NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence mission in Poland. He was asked whether he would propose an emergency session of Parliament on surplus gas sales and the ongoing strike by judicial workers, as demanded by the opposition.

The president said he had not received any formal request from the opposition in that regard and that he would see what he would do because that would set a precedent as such constitutional powers had never been used before.

Commenting on the statement by MP Nikola Grmoja from the Bridge party, Milanovic said it was unfair. “Someone who says that I am an accessory is unfair. It was not me who brought the HDZ to power. He did by fleeing negotiations in 2015, (which enabled) the arrival of a prime minister who does not know Croatian,” he said, referring to Tihomir Oreskovic, a Croatian Canadian businessman who served as Prime Minister of Croatia from January to October 2016.

Describing the gas surplus sales as a scam, Milanovic said that the damage was done. “This is criminal negligence and someone should answer for it politically,” he said. In response to a reporter’s question to say who that was, he added: “Whoever knew but did nothing about it. That’s called command responsibility.” He said that criminal negligence was not necessarily a criminal offence, but that this case “reeked of it”.

Asked what he thought of the role of the PPD gas company and its CEO Pavao Vujnovac in this case, Milanovic said that he had seized the opportunity that presented itself. Responding to a reporter’s remark that PPD had purchased 63 per cent of surplus gas, he said “that money is peanuts to them” and that Vujnovac was irrelevant. The focus should be on people “from the chain of criminal negligence” who did nothing even though they could see what was going on.

Commenting on the judicial workers’ strike, which has entered its seventh week, and a reporter’s remark that the prime minister was obviously trying to break the strike, Milanovic said that it was the prime minister’s “whim” and that it could not be ruled out that he would break them in the end, “but only seemingly”.

“The strikers cannot stay on an unpaid strike for more than ten days because the unions do not have that much money to pay for it. Once the unions use up their reserves, the strikers will return to work, but will not work and will shirk instead,” the president said.

He noted that Supreme Court President Radovan Dobronic had requested a meeting with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, but Plenkovic ignored him.

Milanovic confirmed that talks on the appointment of a new director of the Military Security and Intelligence Agency (VSOA), as well as on other appointments, including a permanent representative to NATO, were ongoing.

“Talks are ongoing. I hope they are in good faith and that they will be productive so that at least the posts in the military are filled. Appointments should not be political and forced, and the names of the candidates should not be made public before we agree on them,” the president said.