If the problem regarding the Hague tribunal is solved, our group will have no problem whatsoever with Croatia starting the talks, the leader of the Greens, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, told Croatian reporters covering Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's two-day visit to Strasbourg.
Cohn-Bendit said that at his meeting with Sanader he had stressed that it would be very important for Croatia, once it started talks with the EU, not to think that it was no longer responsible for the rest of the Balkans.
After it joins the EU, Croatia will not be able to say that it is no longer in the Balkans. Croatia is in the Balkans and membership of the EU is the future of the entire region, not only of Croatia, said Cohn-Bendit.
Asked if it was possible to find a solution in the next few days and for Croatia to start the talks together with Turkey on October 3, Cohn-Bendit said he did not believe it was possible to find a solution in five days.
He said he was confident that the decision-makers knew that they had to make a step and estimated that Croatia would receive a decision on the opening of talks in the next six months.
The leader of the European Socialists, Martin Schultz, said his parliamentary group advocated opening talks with Croatia as soon as possible, but recalled that there was one condition everybody knew - the case of general Gotovina.
He said that more would be known after the chief prosecutor of the Hague war crimes tribunal, Carla del Ponte, submitted her report by the end of the week.
Nevertheless, one should think about the first possible date for the start of talks, because they last for a certain period of time, Schultz said adding that any new enlargement round would require a European constitution, which he said was one of the topics of his talks with Sanader.
Asked to compare the situation regarding talks with Turkey and with Croatia, Schultz said that countries wishing to become full members of the EU had to know that the European Parliament had firmly decided that such countries had to strictly follow EU rules.
Today's decision on Turkey, which was adopted by a majority in the European Parliament, shows that the Parliament is not always making intelligent decisions. I voted against such nonsense, Schultz told Croatian reporters.
The European Parliament today decided to support the opening of accession talks with Turkey, but postponed a vote on the adoption of a protocol on customs union between the EU and Turkey, which is a condition for membership talks. The Parliament postponed the vote on the expansion of customs union to the ten new member countries because of Ankara's statement that the adoption of the protocol did not mean recognition of Cyprus. The postponement, however, will not have any effect on the start of Turkey's EU entry talks scheduled for October 3, because it is not binding.