"It will ratify it, we will join and everything will be alright and the messages from Slovenia are very clear for the first time. They want an agreement to be reached and think it's possible to find a compromise and an agreement, which I think is encouraging," Pusic told reporters.
Asked if Rijeka Mayor Vojko Obersnel had exaggerated with his statement that if Slovenians prevented Croatia from joining the EU, they would not vacation on the Adriatic coast, she said, "The Croatian government is still in charge of the foreign policy in this country and the Slovenians are welcome, dear and important guests."
Pusic said she would "see" Slovenian Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec this week at a meeting of European and Latin American foreign ministers, presidents and premiers in Santiago.
As for criticism from opposition leader Tomislav Karamarko that the Ljubljanska Banka issue and relations with Slovenia should have been dealt with earlier and not now, Pusic said she "couldn't agree more" and that this should have been dealt with "five, six, eight years ago," but that Karamarko's HDZ, in power at the time, "didn't deal with it. It was left to us and we will deal with it."
Pusic went on to say that she expected a lot from Economy Minister Ivan Vrdoljak's visit to Brussels today during which he would try to prove that Croatia could solve the shipyards restructuring issue in time.
She said Croatia must submit by January 31 all information and documentation for the European Commission's final monitoring report due on March 21, reiterating that she expected the report to be positive.
Speaking of her recent meeting with the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Alessandro D'Errico, Pusic said they talked about Croatia-Vatican relations and the situation with regard to the Catholic Church in Croatia.
Asked if they talked about defusing the rhetoric between the Church and the government over health education, Pusic said dialogue was the only solution and that the situation should not be radicalised.
She would not say what she expected the Zagreb County Court would decide regarding a Hungarian prison sentence handed down to former First Deputy PM Radimir Cacic for causing a car crash in Hungary with two fatalities.