Arriving from Osijek, Rehn began his visit with a meeting with Vukovar town and county authorities and representatives of the coordinating body of national minority councils in Vukovar County.
The meeting, held behind closed doors, was attended by the head of the European Commission Delegation to Croatia, Vincent Degert, and the Croatian Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.
Rehn took a walk down European Union Street in the town's centre, whose reconstruction was being funded by the EU and Croatia, and talked to people whose homes had been rebuilt with EU funding.
Now things look better both for you and for Croatia, Rehn said.
Speaking to reporters, Grabar-Kitarovic said that the EU would continue investing in Croatia through pre-accession programmes.
"Only with Croatia's entry into the EU, when we will be using structural and cohesion funds, will there be a genuine inflow of funds that will also be felt at local levels, particularly in people's lives and private entrepreneurship," she said.
According to the European Commission Delegation, the European Union invested 20 million euros in Vukovar County from 1996 to 2003 and a further 45 million euros through pre-accession programmes to date.
Rehn also visited a secondary school, the Franciscan Church of SS Philip and Jacob, and the Serb Orthodox Church of the Holy Father Nicholas where parish priest Dusan Markovic acquainted him with the history of the church and its destruction during the 1991-1995 Homeland War.
Markovic expressed his dissatisfaction with the slow pace of reconstruction of the church, which he said was being funded by the Ministry of Reconstruction and the Vukovar town council.
Accompanied by Grabar-Kitarovic, Rehn laid a wreath in the Homeland War Memorial Cemetery and visited the Memorial Centre at Ovcara, where Serb forces had executed 200 Croatian military and civilian prisoners of war on November 20, 1991.
This is a moving memorial site. I wanted personally to visit this place to pay tribute to the victims, Rehn said during talks with Zdravko Komsic, the head of the Vukovar branch of the association of prisoners of Serb-run concentration camps, who informed the EU commissioner about the construction and exhibition of the Ovcara Memorial Centre.
Rehn said that it was important to remember one's past and show what really happened, adding that it was a basis for reconciliation and development of society as a whole.
The EU enlargement commissioner ended his two-day visit to Croatia today.