Grabar Kitarovic Claims Hungary 'Isn't Blackmailing' Croatia

Grabar Kitarovic said on Tuesday that Hungary's decision to block Croatia's membership of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, was not made to "blackmail" Croatia over an ongoing legal dispute about Hungarian energy company MOL.

"It is about protecting Hungarian business interests because the OECD is not a political but an economic organisation," she said in Budapest, after meeting her Hungarian counterpart Janos Ader and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

After Slovenia announced last Wednesday that it will block Croatia's membership of the OECD, the Hungarian Foreign Ministry said last Friday that it will do the same.

All members of the OECD, an intergovernmental economic organisation that aims to boost trade, may oppose any new country from joining.

The Hungarian Foreign Ministry explained that the reason was Croatia's relations with the partially state-owned Hungarian energy company MOL and its chairman Zsolt Hernadi, who is wanted by the Croatian authorities for alleged corrupt activities.

Hernadi is linked to the long-running, high-profile corruption trial of former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.

MOL went to two separate arbitration processes with Croatia over management rights to Croatian energy company INA, in which the Croatian state holds 44 per cent of shares, and over INA-Croatia gas business contracts.

Grabar Kitarovic explained that Hungary is dissatisfied about the "INA-MOL case".

But she said that the Hungarian prime minister and president had insisted that the decision to prevent Croatia joining the OECD "is not about blackmail, but about protecting the investment climate".

After taking over the presidency in February 2015, Grabar Kitarovic has forged good...