Kroatië schrapt visserijzone om kans op EU toetreding te vergroten (en)
Croatia's parliament on Thursday voted in favour of giving EU members the right to fish in a sensitive zone in the Adriatic Sea in a bid to speed up the country's EU integration.
Previously, Croatia had proclaimed the area a protected fishing and ecological zone - a so-called ZERP - covering an area of about 30,000 square kilometres in the Adriatic Sea, saying it aimed to limit fishing there in order to protect marine life.
It was also to apply to EU members, angering in particular neighbours Slovenia and Italy, who strongly opposed the move. Meanwhile, the EU had indicated that implementing the zone would be "a major obstacle to Croatia's accession to the EU".
Consequently, Croatian lawmakers on Thursday (13 March) decided to approve a proposal of Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who earlier this week suggested the zone be scrapped, saying that priority should be given to the completion of EU accession talks by mid-2009.
The decision was passed by a small majority however, as 77 of the parliamentarians voted in favour of the move, with nine against, while the rest of the lawmakers in the 151-seat body preferred to abstain.
The deputies had debated the issue for some nine hours before a vote at one o'clock in the morning, the Associated Press reports.
"Both issues are important for Croatia; they both are of national interest," Mr Sanader told parliamentarians. But EU accession is an "absolute national interest", he said.
Croatia opened accession talks in 2005 and is hoping to become full EU member by 2011.
It has so far opened 16 out of its 35-chapter EU negotiations package, while two have been provisionally closed.
In January, Austrian Socialist MEP Hannes Swoboda, who is in charge of the Croatian dossier in the European Parliament, had called on the country to speed up its reforms in order to complete negotiations by 2009 or face delay in EU membership.
He had also warned that if the ZERP issue was not solved, Slovenia, which currently holds the EU presidency, would not open the fisheries chapter of Croatia's negotiations package.
On Tuesay this week (11 March), EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn said that solving the fisheries zone problem would boost the country's EU bid.
It would remove "an obstacle and give a crucial and strong push for Croatia's accession negotiations," he said during a workshop on the Balkans in Brussels.