Zagreb hosts inaugural session of the Council of Young Croats Abroad

The inaugural session of the Council of Young Croats Abroad is being held in Zagreb. This is a step towards greater involvement of young Croats from all over the world in shaping policies and programs intended for the Croatian diaspora and communities abroad.

The Council brings together young representatives of Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croatian national minority in European countries, and the Croatian diaspora. As a joint advisory body, it will enable them to present proposals, needs, and ideas, and strengthen ties with Croatia.

“That is why we expect openness, creativity, and initiative. We expect proposals that will be implementable and useful, we expect you to be the voice of your communities, but also bridges that will connect young Croats, regardless of whether they live in Mostar, Sydney, or Subotica,” said Zvonko Milas, State Secretary of the Central State Office for Croats Abroad.

“In the past years, we have achieved all strategic national tasks: freedom, democracy, sovereignty, international recognition, membership in the United Nations and recently in NATO, the European Union, Schengen and the euro area. Tomorrow it will be the last organization that we can meaningfully approach at this moment: the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And with that, in 35 years, we have completely rounded off our international position. This is important to understand how long it takes. This is not just reading a book, so now some logical chronology,” said Andrej Plenković, Prime Minister.

Each of these steps required a lot of work, effort, criteria, reforms, investments, political and diplomatic lobbying.

“And nothing was given as a gift, nothing happened spontaneously or by chance. Everything is hard and painstakingly earned, he added.

Source: HRT