Osijek Mayor Ivan Vrkic, the envoy of President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic under whose auspices the ceremony was held, said that the agreement, signed on 12 November 1995, constituted a framework for territorial reintegration, for the return of Croat refugees and for the stay of Serbs willing to accept the Croatian state.
Neither the Croats nor the Serbs accepted the agreement at first. "The Croats (did not accept the agreement) because after the victories in the operations "Flash" and "Storm" they wanted to return to this area as victors and the Serbs (did not accept it) because they could not believe that they would not have their own state in Croatian territory," said Vrkic. In such a situation the Erdut Agreement created a political framework for dialogue, he said.
We got a strong UN mandate and a transitional administrator, General Jacques Klein, and the reintegration was successfully completed because conditions were created, with a lot of wisdom and political strength of the then leadership and the strong mandate of the international community, to establish Croatian rule in that area, said Vrkic.
The government's envoy at the ceremony, Public Administration Minister Arsen Bauk, said that the Erdut Agreement was a victory of peace over war, of the wisdom of political representatives of Croats and Serbs over the irrational policies of the 1990s, notably those of Serbia's leadership, and that it paved the way to Croatia's integration with the EU and NATO, whose member the country is today.
Bauk said that it was a pity such agreements had not been signed for other parts of Croatia as well because it seemed to him that the Serb minority in the Danube region were in a better position because of the agreement than, for example, Serbs living in Dalmatia or Lika.
The president of the Serb National Council (SNV), Milorad Pupovac, said that the Erdut Agreement was a cornerstone of peace in the Croato-Serbian linguistic territory and that, along with the Dayton Agreement, it had brought peace among Croats and Serbs and was a foundation of the Croatian Serbs' new status that later evolved through legislation.
We would like the Erdut Agreement, as a basis of peace in Croatia, to be given the symbolic and political status it deserves, to be celebrated as a day of peace and to be equally important as some other dates in Croatia, but that unfortunately is not so, said Pupovac.
He said that several elements from the agreement remained to be implemented, including the representation of Serbs in public and state institutions, which he said should be consolidated and not depend on change of government.
The Erdut Agreement on eastern Slavonia, Baranja and western Srijem was signed on 12 November 1995 in Erdut and Zagreb. It was signed by the then presidential chief-of-staff, Hrvoje Sarinic, the head of the Serb negotiating team, Milan Milanovic, and by the then US Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, and UN mediator Thorvald Stoltenberg as witnesses.
The agreement marked the beginning of the UN's two-year transitional administration in the area during which Croatia restored its sovereignty over the temporarily occupied parts of Osijek-Baranja and Vukovar-Srijem counties, which enabled reconstruction in the area ravaged in the Great Serbian aggression on Croatia and the return of refugees.