EU stuurt inspectiemissie naar Kroatië (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - In a bid to keep an eye on Croatia's progress themselves, EU leaders have decided to set up a special taskforce to monitor Zagreb's co-operation with the UN tribunal in The Hague.

The move comes after member states on 16 March decided to postpone opening EU membership talks with Croatia after a majority of governments felt themselves unconvinced as to whether the country was fully co-operating with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The new team will take on board officials from the current and future EU presidency countries - Luxembourg, the UK and Austria - as well as the European Commission and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.

The Luxembourg Presidency is supposed to work out details of the concrete tasks of the working group, which is expected to release its evaluation report about Zagreb's progress in May.

Reacting to the proposal, Croat Prime Minister Ivo Sanader welcomed the move saying "it is good for my country to exploit the momentum."

He added "We will provide all which is required from us to prove we are ready to co-operate with the Tribunal".

Not a precedent

The monitoring team is to make its own judgement on Croatia's dealings with the UN tribunal.

EU foreign ministers will then study the conclusions of the document and act accordingly - should there be a positive outcome, member states could decide to launch the negotiations with Croatia even before the next scheduled summit of the European leaders in June.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg Prime Minister, pointed out that the member states are not trying to undermine the Commission and its role in monitoring EU hopefuls and their readiness to start the EU talks.

"This particular case should not be viewed as a precedent model for the future enlargements," Mr Juncker told journalists after the European Council on Wednesday 23 March.

Challenging The Hague?

The decision on future developments between the EU and Croatia was not originally on the EU spring summit's agenda.

However, Austria and Slovakia were supported by some other leaders in their initiative to put on the table a draft for a new instrument to evaluate Zagreb's action towards the Hague.

"The crucial added value of the taskforce is that the member states themselves will be finally involved in judging to what extent Croatia is actually co-operating with the Tribunal," said Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda.

He said he was personally not convinced by the previous reports of the chief ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte, adding that to his view, she sounded as if she was "punishing Croatia".

"Our initiative is not some kind of oath of loyalty towards Croatia, but an attempt to clarify the vague definitions of what it really means to prove 'full co-operation' with the Tribunal, and mainly to make certain that the judgement is not up to one single person," pointed out Mr Dzurinda.

According to diplomatic sources, an increasing number of member states showed clear support for a more pro-active EU approach towards Zagreb during the two-day summit.

Also, it has been suggested that some countries - such as the UK - will be under more pressure to share the information to which they had previously referred when suggesting that Croatia was not co-operating sufficiently.

The plan to set up an EU monitoring team for Croatia is in line with similar proposals by MEPs. The European Parliament's foreign committee recently sent a letter to the Luxembourg presidency supporting such a move.

But while MEPs also asked for negotiations to start in the meantime and be halted if proof of lack of co-operation is found by the EU monitoring group, member states were apparently reluctant to move so fast.