In the first section of one compromise amendment, Swoboda praised Croatia's full cooperation with the Hague tribunal, but voiced concern about resistance to war crimes trials on the local level, due to the bias of some court officials regarding defendants' nationality and insufficient protection of witnesses from intimidation. Nobody questioned this section of the amendment during the debate.
In the second part of the amendment, the Foreign Affairs Committee voiced concern that some initiatives by the Croatian government, notably the offer to financially support the defence of the generals and the request to be granted amicus curiae status in cases before the Hague tribunal, could be misinterpreted as presumption of innocence.
This part of the amendment was vehemently criticised by Hungarian Liberal Istvan Szent-Ivanyi and Bernd Posselt, an EPP-CDU deputy from Germany.
Presumption of innocence is the foundation stone of every legal system, said Szent-Ivany, while Posselt said that everyone was innocent until proven guilty.
Under European Parliament rules, compromise amendments have to be drawn up when a number of them refers to the same matter but they to not mutually exclude each other.
The draft progress report on Croatia which Swoboda presented to the Foreign Affairs Committee on January 30 explicitly mentioned the case of General Ante Gotovina and the financing of his defence, but not the presumption of innocence. The draft voiced concern that the financing and the status of amicus curiae would send an ambiguous message to the public.
At the end of today's discussion, Swoboda accepted the suggestions Szent-Ivany and Posselt made regarding the presumption of innocence, so that this part is likely to be removed when the Committee will vote on the draft report in the afternoon.
Slovene deputies Borut Pahor and Lojze Peterle complained that the compromise amendments dedicated too much space to outstanding issues such as the Croatia-Slovenia border, and said that Swoboda's report was on Croatia and not on two countries' bilateral relations. They were also bothered by the mention of arbitration as one of the ways to solve outstanding Croatia-Slovenia border issues, and suggested eliminating Swoboda's compromise amendment mentioning arbitration.
This amendment urged the Croatian and Slovene governments to exploit every possibility available to agree on border issues, by taking into account agreements reached so far and the European Council's conclusions of June 17-18, 2004, and called on them to refrain from any unilateral moves that might undermine such an agreement.
If such an agreement was not reached, the amendment called on the two sides to consider resorting to a third side, through mediation or international arbitration, in order to close the contentious border issues. They were also called on to use the months ahead to agree on the essence of the dispute or on a procedure to close it, either through mediation or arbitration.
In his draft report, Swoboda did not mention either arbitration or mediation but called on the two governments to find a solution in friendly agreement. Slovenia started objecting to the fact that this was requested of Ljubljana as well and not just of Zagreb, with Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel complaining that the European Parliament was equally treating Slovenia, an EU country, and Croatia, which is an accession candidate.
Swoboda replied that amendments on the border had been submitted by Slovene deputies so he could not avoid them.
Pahor, Peterle and another Slovene deputy, Jelko Kacin, submitted amendments to Swoboda's draft progress report mentioning Croatia's Ecological and Fisheries Protection Zone (EFPZ) and asking that the report call on Croatia to refrain from one-sided moves and to honour the June 2004 trilateral agreement and the European Council's conclusions of June 17-18, 2004.
Those conclusions granted Croatia EU accession candidate status and applauded the Croatian Parliament's decision to postpone the application of the EFPZ to EU countries.
Swoboda accepted Croatia's suggestion and submitted a compromise amendment to his report calling on the two sides to consider the possibility of resorting to international arbitration. However, he had to take into account the Slovene deputies' amendments, so in the compromise amendment he mentioned the agreements reached so far, referring to the initialled but not ratified Racan-Drnovsek border deal and the European Council's June 2004 conclusions.