Grlić Radman announces Croatia's joining the Drone Coalition

“Croatia intends to join the Drone Coalition of Latvia and Great Britain with the aim of ensuring a secure drone supply chain in the West,” announced Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Gordan Grlić Radman on Friday in Riga.

The minister is today on an official visit to Latvia, a country that the minister considers a good partner of Croatia, but in whose relations there is also a lot of room and will for progress.

“Croatia and Latvia share a similar history, and our experiences lay a solid foundation for mutual understanding and close partnership,” said Gordan Grlić Radman after a meeting with his Latvian counterpart Baiba Braže, announcing cooperation in areas such as transport infrastructure, digitalization and the IT industry, the electrical industry, the food and pharmaceutical industries.

The minister particularly emphasized cooperation in the defense industry, announcing Croatia's desire to join the Latvian Drone Coalition established in February last year.

The Coalition's goals are to ensure Ukraine's dominance in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles by providing a stable supply of drones and generally support the production of drones in the West and strengthening the capabilities to use them, the Latvian Ministry of Defense said on its website.

“We agreed on uncompromising support for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and that only the Ukrainian people must decide on their future,” the minister said after the meeting of the two diplomats.

In addition to Latvia, Great Britain and Ukraine, the Coalition has so far been joined by the European countries Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Poland, Germany and Sweden, as well as NATO members Turkey and Norway, and overseas Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

“In the field of defense, Latvia and Croatia also cooperate within the framework of NATO's Forward Land Forces activities, where Croatian forces have been participating since 2017 with the aim of strengthening the Baltics,” Grlić Radman emphasized.

The Minister also thanked the partner country for its support in the process of joining the OECD, since Latvia joined this prestigious community in 2016.

“Membership in the OECD is very important for Croatia as the final step of our full integration into Euro-Atlantic structures,” he assessed.

Finally, it was pointed out that the Latvian capital Riga is directly connected by air to Dubrovnik and Split during the summer months, calling this a sign of the development of tourism cooperation as well as overall bilateral relations.

Source: HRT