Croatia

Zoran Milanovic said on Monday that his decision to return state honours to Branimir Glavas was legally sound, even though he is on trial for alleged war crimes.

"Glavas asked for this, he sent a request, because he has been formally unconvinced for five years. If he had not asked me, I wouldn't have interfered," Milanovic told media.

Croatia will procure 12 used French F3R Rafale fighter jets to modernise the country's airforce, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic announced on Friday.

"This is the largest investment in the Croatian Armed Forces, the largest investment in ensuring lasting peace and the security of Croatian citizens," the Prime Minister said referencing the price of 999 million euros.

A collection of portraits of migrants and refugees who lost their lives on the so-called Balkan Route to Western Europe has opened in the Living Atelier DK gallery in Croatia's capital Zagreb.

Green-Left Trend?

Croatian leader of 'Mozemo' Party Tomislav Tomasevic casts his ballot at a polling station in downtown Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANTONIO BAT

While Croatia's ruling centre-right conservatives can console themselves with respectable results outside the capital in the local elections, the May 16 first round in the local elections brought no such comfort to Croatia's traditional left-wing standard bearers, the Social Democrats, SDP. In left-leaning Zagreb, they did even worse than the conservatives.

While the Right may claim victory in Sunday's local elections in Croatia, the capital is tilting to the Left.

A controversial annual mass gathering of Croats at Loibacher Feld near the Austrian town of Bleiburg, which has been accused of nurturing nationalist sentiments, is not expected to take place this weekend, Austrian police said on Thursday, after the event was also cancelled in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic drew condemnation on Thursday after he insulted reporters from the public broadcaster Croatian Radio Television, HRT, in the coastal city of Split, accusing them of being tricksters, mercenaries and an embarrassment to the country.

A survey of Croatian high school pupils showed that less than a third of the participants consider Croatia's World War II Nazi-allied state a fascist state and over half were either undecided or unwilling to give their opinion.

Brdo pri Kranju – Slovenian Foreign Minister Anže Logar and his Italian and Croatian counterparts, Luigi di Maio and Gordan Grlić Radman, signed in Brdo pri Kranju on Wednesday a joint statement on trilateral cooperation in the northern Adriatic. The document is the foundation for strengthening cooperation in areas that are key for all three countries, Logar said.