"With his statement Mesic has grossly violated our rights stemming from the Constitution and the Constitutional Law on National Minorities' Rights," Mak said on Tuesday, adding that there was no collective guilt.
What matters is whether Croatian laws are being applied and whether Croatia is a law-based country or not, Mak said, adding that the 1945 Potsdam conference and former German Chancellor Willy Brandt, mentioned in Mesic's address to the nation, had nothing to do with the issue.
On Monday evening Mesic delivered a televised address on Croatia's agreement with Austria on the restitution of property belonging to members of the German ethnic community. In his address the President spoke critically of the agreement which the Ivo Sanader cabinet drafted with the Republic of Austria to regulate the restitution of property belonging to ethnic Germans who fled Yugoslavia after 1945, in the wake of the Second World War.
Mak said that Mesic was wrong when he claimed that the agreement referred to ethnic Germans, also known as the Volksdeutsch people.
The agreement refers to citizens of the Republic of Austria, including Jews, and even Croats, Mak said.
The MP went on to say that the restitution of the confiscated property was linked to the 2002 amendments to the relevant Croatian law which stipulates the restitution of property seized after 1944 from foreign citizens provided that the country where they now live concludes an agreement with Zagreb on the matter.
Austria was the first country to take this opportunity and seven years ago it asked Croatia to start solving the issue.
Mak said he had no data on how many ethnic Austrians and Germans would ask for the restitution of property.