ZAGREB, Jan 16 (Hina) – The European Commission (EC) doesn’t have any outstanding legal issues regarding the construction of the Pelješac Bridge, the EC said on Tuesday after Croatian MP Ivan Lovrinović claimed that the EC had made the financing of that project conditional on Croatia’s resolving its border issues with Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Commission carefully analysed the project proposal submitted by Croatia for the co-financing of the Pelješac Bridge and checked that all the conditions and procedural steps foreseen under the Cohesion Policy were met before the project was approved.
Based on additional information supplied by Croatia, the European Commission concluded that there were no outstanding legal issues related to that project when it comes to internal procedures within the Commission and the EU, an EC spokesman told Hina.
The EC adopted a decision on 7 June 2017 to grant 357 million euro from Cohesion Policy funds, that is 85% of the cost of building Pelješac Bridge which would connect the country’s southernmost Dubrovnik-Neretva County with the rest of the country.
MP Ivan Lovrinović of the Let’s Change Croatia (Promijenimo Hrvatsku) party on Tuesday said that he heard that the EC wants the sea border dispute with Bosnia and Herzegovina to be solved before the construction of the bridge can begin.
“According to our information, the European Commission has requested in writing for Croatia to resolve its border issue at sea with Bosnia and Herzegovina prior to the construction,” Lovrinović told an extraordinary press conference.
