"It might have been more elegant for the Commission to send its letter to the Zagreb County Court on the Glavas case through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration," Krisztina Nagy said on Wednesday against a backdrop of Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader's strong-worded comment on the conduct of the head of the EC Delegation to Croatia, Vincent Degert, in the Glavas case and in debates about Croatia's plans on the possible activation of the Ecological and Fisheries Protection Zone (EFPZ).
Glavas is an independent Member of Parliament suspected of war crimes, recently released from custody due to his deteriorated condition caused by a hunger strike.
Nagy, however, did not mention the EFPZ, but her statement focused on the Glavas case. On Monday Degert said he would ask the court to explain Judge Zdenko Posavec's decision to release hunger-striking Glavas and suspend the investigation into his involvement in war crimes in Osijek in 1991.
"At the same time it is noteworthy that in the common interest of the EU and the Candidate Countries it is a long-standing tradition that the Commission has direct contacts with various institutions of candidate countries. The Commission has a unique role in the accession process and contacts between the Commission and Croatian authorities are extremely intensive in wide ranging areas," the spokeswoman said, adding that these contacts have increased enormously since Croatia became a candidate country and especially since its accession negotiations began.
"We already have for example close relations with the Court in question, notably through our role in delivering EC assistance," she said.
"In this context we monitor regularly the developments in Croatia. We do not comment on individual cases, it is nevertheless these individual cases that provide the empirical evidence on the basis of which we assess how the system works. Therefore we are closely following each development in that regard. It is in this context that the Commission would like to have all available information as to why Mr. Glavas was released from prison last Saturday," Nagy stated.
She concluded by saying that the Commission considered that "Vincent Degert does an excellent job" as the head of the EC Delegation in Zagreb.