Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said at the start of Thursday's session of the government that in a dispute with the European Commission about the so-called Lex Perkovic, Croatia had not lost anything but received the Commission's support for the implementation of the law on the rights of ethnic minorities, adding that the public had finally understood why the Constitution would be amended.
Amendments to the law concerning the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and the government's position on the amendments to the Constitution are on the agenda of today's session of the Zoran Milanovic cabinet at which the prime minister reiterated his message to pessimists - it will get better. "Unfortunately, our pessimists are not happy with the good news. This is just the way it is in Croatia," Milanovic said, adding that by presenting an agreement on Lex Perkovic on Wednesday, a process which has been haunting the public for several weeks has been closed.
"We have learned a lot from this at a very small price," Milanovic said, adding that there would be similar misunderstandings in the future as well. He underlined that countries aware of themselves should not get upset over this because they have dozens of lawsuits with the European Commission before the European Court, they take their position and move on.
"Unfortunately. in the past 20 years we have gotten used to being threatened realistically but more often unrealistically and people are still traumatised by that. I say, heads up, I have bad news for pessimists - we will act this way in the future too," Milanovic said. He underlined that Croatia had lost absolutely nothing and that this helped him to address this topic in talks with a significant number of European prime ministers and to "see that we are indeed right" about this.
The most important thing in his opinion, however, is the fact that the government received a direct support for its efforts in the implementation of the law on ethnic minorities' rights.
Milanovic underlined the fact that another important thing is that there is finally an understanding about the objective of the constitutional amendments in Croatia. "We are launching constitutional amendments, the government will forward its opinion to parliament, as the parliament initiated the constitutional changes, to prevent first degree murders from being protected by the statute of limitations. This is a better and broader definition compared to the original proposal (under which there is no statute of limitations for politically motivated murders)," Milanovic said.
