For those who say that our monitoring report was a wake-up call I would say it was, but not for the media or the for parliaments of some of the member states. It was a wake-up call for Croatia, Fuele told Croatian reporters on the sidelines of a conference on EU enlargement in Prague.

His statement followed media reports and statements by influential politicians in Germany who claimed that Croatia was not yet ready to become a full member of the EU.

Fuele noted that before becoming a member Croatia had to carry out 10 tasks set out in the recent monitoring report issued by the European Commission. I have absolutely no doubt about the ability of the Croatian government to carry out those tasks so that Croatia would become a member on July 1, 2013 as planned by the European Council, he added.

There is growing resistance in the German parliament, the Bundestag, towards a hasty admission of Croatia as a full member of the European Union, Der Spiegel news magazine said on Sunday.

"There should be no giving in just to raise hope," the chairman of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee, Ruprecht Polenz of the Christian Democratic Union, told Der Spiegel. He said that the planned accession of Croatia to the European Union on July 1 next year was possible only if the next European Commission progress report was positive.

The Speaker of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, again expressed his scepticism about Croatia's readiness for EU membership. "The example of Bulgaria and Romania shows that expectations that it will be easier to solve problems after entry into the EU are impracticable. We must not repeat the same mistake," he told Der Spiegel.

Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Minister Vesna Pusic said in Prague earlier on Monday that all problems with Germany had been solved regarding Croatia's preparedness for EU membershio, which had been raised by some high-ranking German officials.

"We have solved all problems," she told the press on the fringes of the Forum 2000 conference.