Plenković says a new model is needed for Ukraine's EU accession

The Croatian Prime Minister is in Davos Switzerland, where he is participating in the annual World Economic Forum. Much of the talk in Davos has centered on US ambitions to annex Greenland and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

On Thursday morning Prime Minister Andrej Plenković participated in a panel discussion on Ukraine. The panel featured a number of European leaders and the US President Donald Trump's special envoy for Russia-Ukraine negotiations, Steve Witkoff. Witkoff said that the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are at the end of the process and that he is "optimistic". After Davos, Witkoff will travel to Moscow where he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For his part, Prime Minister Plenković made it clear that Croatia's policy is one of total support for Ukraine: “Croatia certainly belongs to the group of countries which is very clearly pro-Ukrainian in terms of solidarity and support from the first day, stemming from our own experience because Croatia, due to the Greater Serbian aggression in the beginning of the 1990's, had at one point also 27 percent of its territory occupied. Today, Ukraine has around 19.5 percent of its territory occupied as a result of an aggression that has lasted for more than 12 years.”

However, President Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Davos for roughly one hour today, after which he stressed that there is still a "long way" to go before the war with Russia ends.

Prime Minister Plenković also commented on Thursday's extraordinary meeting of the European Council at which European leaders are discussing the latest developments in transatlantic relations and their consequences for the European Union. He also commented on Ukraine's accession to the European union: “The approach to enlargement so-far was based on the so-called merit based approach of every country that aspires to be a member - which means a criteria process. Once the process is fulfilled everybody agrees with the Commission's assessment in the Council and then the process can be completed. What we see now are the signals of a different approach, and that is geopolitical. And, in my view, it is the only real chance for a speedier integration of Ukraine into the European Union will happen.”

The prime minister’s statement has puzzled some Croatian’s who clearly remember that Croatia was subjugated to a very rigorous and some would argue unfair accession process. Begging the question, why the prime minister feels the same conditions should not apply to all candidate countries.

Source: HRT