Speaking to reporters after a session of a high party body in Zadar on Saturday, Friscic said that the HSS in 2003 had proposed adopting legislation to regulate the protection of the ecological-fishing zone. The relevant law was adopted, but its application was postponed for a year and that year expired in October 2004. Since then, nothing has been done to activate the zone, Friscic said.
In the meantime Croatia started membership talks with the European Union, but Croatian negotiators are not discussing the issue of the ecological-fishing zone. "If we fail to activate the zone, upon admission to the EU we will leave that part of Croatian territory to others".
More than a million euro worth of fish is caught in the zone every day, which means that Croatia is leaving more than 300 million euros to others every year, the HSS leader said.
"We are aware that we lack a fishing fleet, but we can give others a concession to use the zone until we form a fleet," he added.