Croatia's Ministry highlights obstacles to better relations with Serbia - EXCLUSIVE
Croatia is very interested in building good relations with all our neighbors and is working hard to that end, the source in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia said in an exclusive interview with CE Report.
As the Ministry highlighted, Croatia would like to see the relations with Serbia improved, the Ministry noted.
"In case of Serbia there are certain challenges to these efforts including lack of political will on Serbian side to work on open issues and continuous smear campaign and deeply rooted anti-Croatian narrative in Serbia with provocative statements and moves, which are not in line with the principle of good neighborly relations and do not contribute in any way to improving relations," the source explained.
The ministry added that the issue of missing persons is of crucial importance for Croatia and crucial for the relations between Croatia and Serbia.
"Croatia is putting huge efforts to resolve fate of missing persons; hundreds of potential locations were searched, and several mass graves and individual graves were found; In 2025, through the efforts of Croatian institutions 43 missing persons have been identified; in the past nine years, a total of 323 persons have been identified. However, in spite all the efforts by competent authorities of Croatia, there are still 1740 unresolved missing persons cases. A fundamental obstacle to a more effective resolution of their fate is the lack of reliable information about the locations of hidden mass and individual graves. That is why the cooperation with Serbia, especially when it comes to information sharing, is of vital importance," the source clarified.
In short, what we expect from Serbia is very simple: meaningful bilateral cooperation between competent authorities of two countries through swift exchange of information, the Ministry underlined.
"Of course, Croatia is prepared to engage in the bilateral dialogue; there are a number of issues between Croatia and Serbia that need to be discussed and solved, so there is no alternative to dialogue," the source said.
As the Ministry noted, Croatia has consistently encouraged bilateral dialogue and practical work on outstanding issues and we have initiated the bilateral dialogue on several occasions in the past few years.
"For example, on our initiative and following numerous protractions by Serbian side, in October 2024 meeting of the coordinators for outstanding issues between Croatia and Serbia was held in Zagreb, where both sides committed to accelerating efforts in resolving open issues. Unfortunately, no tangible progress followed, not even the follow up meeting has been organized by Serbia," the source concluded.
Photo: Wikipedia
This interview was prepared by Julian Müller
