At Thursday's session of his cabinet before leaving for Berlin, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said that the tasks Croatia still needed to complete to join the European Union (EU) "will fall to just one or two" by the end of the year.
Milanovic stressed that of the fifty conditions Croatia had to fulfill that number had fallen to just ten as mentioned in the last European Commission monitoring report and that by the new year, most of these too would be resolved.
"Next year, it is my firmest belief, we will be entering the EU as a country ready to do so", he said adding that by the year's end 21 EU countries will have ratified the accession treaty.
He mentioned that one of the tasks Croatia had yet to complete was the privatisation of the Split shipbuilding yard and urged all those responsible to have the contract signed as soon as possible, as it was "high time" this was done, he said.
Milanovic reflected on the huge changes and agreements about the way the EU functions, stating that this had positively impacted world financial markets and Croatia has profited from it whereby revenues from government bonds are higher than ever.
"We are partially responsible for this favourable circumstance and partly lucky and it is important to know how to grab the chance", he sad. This is a positive trend that is very significant to public finances and an opportunity to access cheaper money. "All countries function in that way, some responsibly, some less responsibly and some irresponsibly. We are being more and more responsible", Milanovic concluded.
