In late March the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted a progress report on Croatia and sent it in the form of a draft resolution to the parliament to consider it at its plenary session in Strasbourg.
The draft resolution along with about 30 amendments will be put on the agenda of the parliamentary session on Wednesday.
The EP resolution, that is not a legally binding document, is likely to be the first document of some of EU institutions mentioning 2009 as the year when Croatia may enter the European bloc.
The draft resolution reads that "Croatia should do its outmost to carry out the necessary reforms so that the negotiations can be concluded in time for the European Parliament to give its assent before the next EU parliamentary election in June 2009."
The document also commends Croatia for considerable progress it has so far made on the way to the EU accession.
It emphasises a through reform of the state administration, judiciary and police is a prerequisite for achieving standards necessary for EU membership.
The draft document also "supports the government and opposition in their efforts, despite the forthcoming elections, to take necessary, albeit sometimes difficult decisions, particularly in the field of competition policy and state aid, and points out that those decisions will ultimately benefit all Croatian citizens".
Croatia has been commended also for the cooperation with the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal but the draft expresses concerns "however, that, as shown by recent judicial decisions, the effective prosecution of war crimes might be undermined by hostility at local level, persisting bias amongst some of the judicial staff against non-Croatian nationals and insufficient protection of witnesses against intimidation".
The document mentions the concerns "about certain initiatives taken by the Government, notably its offer to support the defence costs for army generals and its request to act as amicus curiae in cases pending before the ICTY".
A German parliamentarian in the EP, Bernd Possel (a deputy of the EPP-ED Group) announced that he would move an amendment insisting on the removal of the above paragraph.
I don't accept the part of the report saying that Croatia and its government should be criticised for trying to become "amicus curiae" in the Gotovina case. That's part of normal procedure before the tribunal and it's not even topical now. I think we should delete that part, because it's not fair and has nothing to do with Croatia's membership in the EU or with the progress report. It's just a kind of propaganda, Posselt said last week.
Regarding some problems about the identification of the state border between Slovenia and Croatia, Socialist member of the European Parliament, Austria's Hannes Swoboda, has suggested that the resolution should include an invitation to Croatia and Slovenia to use the services of a third party in case they cannot bilaterally resolve their border dispute.
A group of deputies of Italian "Alleanza Nazionale", who belong to the nationalistic and Euro-sceptic group called the Union for Europe of the Nations Group, moved a series of amendments claiming that Italians who left Croatia after Second World War were discriminated against in rights regulating property restitution. They also insist that the EP recognises "the massacre against more than 20,000 Italians" perpetrated by the former Communist regime in Yugoslavia.