ZAGREB, April 22, 2018 – Prime Minister and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) leader Andrej Plenković said on Saturday that his party was against the revision of Croatia’s agreements with the Holy See and that his cabinet was committed to complying with the treaties.
We cannot see any reason and this discussion doesn’t change our relationship with the Catholic Church in Croatia or with the Holy See, Plenković said at a gathering of HDZ members from academic institutions and tertiary education in Zagreb on Saturday.
The opposition party whose acronym in Croatian is GLAS on Friday informed that it had sent a motion into parliamentary procedure proposing the launching of negotiation procedures to revise the treaties between the Holy See and Croatia with the aim of protecting secular values which, this party underscores, is a constitutional category.
GLAS leader Anka Mrak Taritaš told the news conference that. based on the Vatican Agreements, Croatia earmarked 900 million kuna a year for the Catholic Church, which was more than the allocations for the foreign and tourism ministries combined.
Commenting on other issues, Plenković confirmed that he had met with President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović on Friday for the talks on nominees for Croatia’s diplomatic representatives abroad and that they had also discussed other issues pertaining to the functioning of the state authorities. He said that the proposals for the rotation of ambassadors would be hammered out in the coming weeks.
Concerning the issue of the Sisak oil refinery, following the claims of MOL’s executive Sandor Fasimon that the refinery has no future, Plenković said that his cabinet had picked the consultants for the process of buying back INA’s share from MOL. He said that the process was being implemented in a systematic and thorough manner.
