"We have been reassured by a number of people from the Commission and from the EU member countries that should there be no constitutional arrangement that there are other means (...) that would provide for Croatia to join as the 28th member," Grabar-Kitarovic told the EUobserver web portal.
Explaining that the current Nice Treaty "provides for 27 member states" the minister noted that institutional issues - such as the number of MPs the country has, as well as its voting weight in the law-making council - "need to be defined."
She suggested there are two ways it could be done if the EU fails to agree a new treaty by 2009 - both the EU's own institutional reform target date as well as the year that Zagreb would like to join the bloc. One possibility would be either to amend the Nice Treaty itself or to add details to Croatia's own accession treaty - a document laying out the terms of Zagreb's EU membership, EUobserver said.
Croatia prefers to tack on institutional changes to its accession treaty, which would go through national parliaments for approval rather than the more perilous route of possible referendums if the Nice Treaty is altered, the minister told the online news service. "It's a decision for the EU, [but] perhaps it would be simpler, where Croatia is concerned, to look at our accession treaty," Grabar-Kitarovic said.
She went on to say that the EU should look at Croatia in terms of its merits and not through the prism of whether its institutions are in order, with the European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso among those suggesting that the EU needs a new treaty in order to further enlarge the union.
"We hope that the EU will continue to base enlargement on an individual approach of every country to follow the pace of reforms and its readiness and its determination to continue with reforms," the minister said in the interview, adding that the bloc should Croatia on how Croatia is doing and find a solution to set the institutional framework so the country could join as the 28th member. She also voiced optimism concerning Croatia's progress on the path to the EU.
Croatia opened the EU accession talks in October 2005. Since then, it temporarily closed two of a total of 33 chapters that are being negotiated - Science and Research Chapter and Education and Culture Chapter - and opened another three - Customs Union, Enterprise and Industrial Policy and Economic and Monetary Union.
She admitted that there are problems in the country particularly concerning corruption - a point raised by EU member states at a regular meeting with Zagreb yesterday (6 March) - but noted the government is working to change the situation putting anti-corruption measures in place and "solving concrete cases of corruption".
Expressing wish that negotiations would go faster, Grabar-Kitarovic said Croatia hoped "the EU will also keep, and even speed up the momentum of negotiations at this point (...) so that we don't lose any time".