Officials at the ministry said that everything that needed to be said could be found in the correspondence forwarded to European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding in which Justice Minister Orsat Miljenic underscored that he was surprised with announcements of possible "safeguard measures" as no serious shortcomings had occurred in transposing or implementing the EU acquis communautaire.

Miljenic stressed that Croatia was executing the EAW, that it had taken on the obligation to align the law on judicial cooperation in criminal matters with European Union member states and that a "clearly defined schedule of when legislative changes would be prepared, passed in the Sabor and come into force" had been sent to the Commission.

He recalled that safeguard measures had not been applied towards Slovenia or the Czech Republic that too had introduced a time limit concerning the implementation of the EAW, even though this had not been negotiated in their entry talks.

In a September 2 letter to Commissioner Reding, Miljenic noted that the the Ministry would put amendments to the law into procedure within two weeks which would, as of July 15 next year, remove the time limit on the EAW for crimes committed after August 2002.

The media have speculated that one of the problems in this case lies in a mistake in the translation of regulations concerning the EAW, where the Croatian version notes that a time limit can be adopted even after the Council adopts a framework decision, while the English original states that this relates only to those countries that were members of the European Union at the time when the decision was adopted.