He attended a meeting of the Joint Parliamentary Committee of the European Union and Croatia. The Committee is comprised of deputies of the Croatian and European Parliaments. Also in attendance were representatives of Croatia's EU accession negotiating team, the EC and the EU Presidency.
Mirel said Croatia had made headway over the past year in terms of companies' rights, financial services and intellectual property rights, but added that more would have to be done in environmental protection, market competition, the judiciary, and fundamental rights.
Speaking of refugee return, Mirel voiced dissatisfaction with the slow provision of housing to former tenancy right holders and said something should be done in this area.
Speaking of protection of minorities, Mirel said limited progress had been achieved in the implementation of the constitutional law on national minorities' rights. He commended top officials for condemning all ethnically motivated incidents, saying this should also be done on the local level.
Mirel said the screening of the adjustment of Croatian legislation to European standards had been very good. The EC has drawn up screening reports for 15 policy chapters, including 11 that have already been dealt with by the Council of the EU, while four are still being discussed.
Mirel said the EC suggested opening negotiations on three chapters -- agriculture, fisheries, and intellectual property rights -- without setting additional benchmarks.
The European Parliament rapporteur for Croatia, Austrian Socialist Hannes Swoboda, criticised Slovene Liberal deputy Jelko Kacin's recent statement that Croatia could not look forward to joining the EU before 2012. Swoboda said that in principle it was bad to speculate about a date because this elicited negative reactions.
Croatian Serb MP Milorad Pupovac said that one print and one electronic medium in Croatia, whose owners are from the EU, disseminated hate speech and intolerance and nurtured an anti-minority attitude. He declined to name the two media, asking that a debate be opened on this matter. He was told that there was nothing the EU could do given that the media were privately owned.
The discussion also focused on outstanding border issues between Croatia and Slovenia, with most participants underlining that this was a bilateral issue the two states should settle by themselves.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee meeting ends tomorrow.