Croatia

Croatian political leaders gathered on Wednesday in the Plitvice Lakes national park to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Operation Plitvice and the death of Josip Jovic, the first Croatian police officer killed in 1991-95 war for independence.

Zagreb – Members of the Slovenian ethnic minority in Croatia can no longer enter Slovenia without a negative PCR test from today, which means hassle and expenses in particular for those who regularly cross the border, their representative has warned.

The European Court of Human Rights, ECHR in Strasbourg ruled on Thursday that Croatia violated the rights of a Croatian Serb war refugee whose property was taken over and damaged by another family while he was out of the country, and ordered the state to pay him compensation.

News that the Croatian branch of N1 TV could go off air within days has angered viewers, media unions and democracy watchdogs - especially as screens will go blank at a politically sensitive time, in the run-up to local elections.

Two Croatian human rights organisations criticised Croatia for the "slow processing of war crimes" in a statement to mark the European Day for Victims of Crime on Monday.

Croatia's Interior Ministry was tasked during a November visit to Zagreb by officials of the European Commission and the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) with drawing up a draft mechanism as a basis for negotiations.

Croatia's Interior Minister, Davor Bozinovic, condemned a failed visit by a group of Italian MEPs to the Croatia-Bosnia border as having "the obvious intention to damage Croatia's reputation".

Ljubljana – Slovenia recorded slightly over three million arrivals of domestic and foreign tourists in 2020, down by almost 51% on 2019, as a surge in domestic tourism failed to offset the collapse in foreign tourist arrivals, show data released by the Statistics Office on Friday.

Zagreb – The foreign ministers of Slovenia and Croatia, Anže Logar and Gordan Grlić Radman, assessed after their talks in Zagreb on Friday that they had managed to raise the Slovenian-Croatian relations to a higher level in the past ten months. The talks focussed on Croatia’s exclusive economic zone in the Adriatic Sea, and included the border arbitration.

Ljubljana – Foreign Minister Anže Logar has announced that he will pay his first official visit to Croatia on Friday, with the topics of talks to include the intention by Croatia and Italy to declare exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the Adriatic Sea.