"Croatia has met all criteria, it has pledged to continue with reforms until accession to the EU and it is an element of stability among its neighbours. A country can't join the EU without normalising relations with its neighbours. Croatia has done it in a formal way with Serbia in Vukovar, which I will visit today," Leonetti told reporters on the margins of a seminar on trafficking in humans which is being held in Zagreb on Thursday and Friday and the opening of which he attended.

In Vukovar Leonetti is expected to lay a wreath in tribute to victims of the Ovcara atrocity and visit the city hospital.

The French minister was hopeful that the outcome of Croatia's forthcoming referendum on EU entry would be positive. Ratification will then follow in EU parliaments, including the French parliament, and I can say that there is no hesitation whatsoever in France regarding Croatia's accession, said Leonetti.

He put emphasis on reconciliation in the region, saying that after Vukovar he would also visit Belgrade where he would state the same message.

Serbia has a prospect of EU membership. It should join the EU, there are no special additional conditions it should meet to get candidate status. However, there is a moral and real obligation Serbia must meet - it cannot enter the EU without solving problems in relations with its neighbours, said Leonetti.

"We believe that Croatia is an element which encourages other nations to realise that one should not forget the past, but that one should look to the future, and the future is Europe," he added.

The Croatian Foreign Ministry's State Secretary for European Integration, Andrej Plenkovic, who addressed reporters together with Leonetti, said that Croatia did not have a Plan B.

"If we look at the opinion polls, the reforms carried out, the information campaign that is being conducted, the key parties' positions... I believe that a convincing majority of Croatians will recognise in the referendum the strategic development character of Croatia's prospective EU membership and support the efforts made so far to achieve it," said Plenkovic.

As for the process of ratification of Croatia's EU accession treaty in EU parliaments, Plenkovic said he believed that it would be completed by 1 July 2013.

Asked if he expected any problems in the ratification process considering that Slovenia would have early elections and that there had been proposals in the Czech Republic and Ireland to vote together on Croatia's EU accession treaty and the Czech exemptions from the Treaty of Lisbon and Ireland's formal guarantees on a low corporate tax rate, Plenkovic said Croatia's treaty was a unique legal document that would go through a separate procedure of ratification.

"Our treaty is a unique legal document. As for the Irish or Czech protocols, they are separate legal documents that will go through a separate procedure of ratification in the member-states' parliaments. They can be voted on roughly at the same time as a European package, but there will be two separate votes," Plenkovic said, adding that "there will be no mixing of some other issue with the text of Croatia's EU accession treaty."

Asked to comment on a Croatian bill declaring null and void all legal documents from Serbia regarding the 1991-1995 Homeland War in Croatia, Leonetti said he had not discussed that issue with Croatian officials.

Earlier in the day, the French minister was received for talks by President Ivo Josipovic. They discussed relations between the two countries, describing them as very friendly and progressing.