Great Britain and Croatia agreed that Croatia's EU admission as the 28th member of the bloc represented an unprecedented opportunity for both countries to develop stronger ties between their governments, businessmen and people in general, read a joint statement of the two ministers.

Pusic and Hague also underlined they advocated European prospects for all Western Balkan countries, based on "strict but fair conditions", announcing stronger cooperation on the EU level.

In that context we shall try to strengthen our economic relations and encourage trade and investments, read the joint statement.

Pusic, who is on a working visit to Great Britain, told Croatian reporters that her meeting with Hague was "excellent". "This was an opportunity for us to discuss the situation in the EU and in our region ... the main change is that up until a month ago talks like this were mainly about Croatia and the problems we have, and now a very little amount of time is spent on Croatia and talks are mostly focused on the future of the European Union," Pusic said.

Commenting on the issue of Britain's ratification of Croatia's EU Accession Treaty, announced for early 2013, Pusic said "Hague believes there is a practical consensus among British political parties about the Croatia's admission and readiness to enter the bloc".

Pusic said her talks with Hague also focused on the issue of the old Ljubljanska Banka clients, over which Slovenia had threatened to bloc the ratification of Croatia's EU Accession Treaty. "I told him that we are very active in resolving this issue ... and that we are very opened for talks about different solutions, but that we are also confident that it would be logical to separate this issue from ratification," the Croatian minister said.

During her stay in London, Pusic also held talks with the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Suma Chakrabarti and gave a talk in the EBRD headquarters.