ZAGREB, August 22, 2019 – Addressing a conference of Croatian diplomats in Zagreb on Thursday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković advised them to be careful in choosing their associates, following a recent scandal of a former first secretary in the Croatian embassy in Berlin, Elizabeta Mađarević who was suspended from the diplomatic service due to her racist and xenophobic remarks on her social media profiles.
Plenković reiterated the condemnation of racist and xenophobic statements made by the former diplomat Mađarević. President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, who joined in the condemnation of the scandal, said that the incident had happened also owing to “omissions in the system”.
The case of the dismissed embassy secretary to some extent dominated the annual conference of Croatia’s diplomats, however, the event also highlighted the latest successes of the Croatian diplomacy, including the election of Croatia’s Marija Pejčinović Burić as the secretary-general of the Council of Europe and the appointment of former Croatian member of parliament, Ivana Maletić to the European Court of Auditors.
The participants in the conference agreed that Dubravka Šuica, who has been proposed for a Croatian member of the future European Commission, is good candidate for the Croatian representative at the EC.
“The election of Pejčinović Burić for the Council of Europe secretary-general is a great Croatian success, we who lobbied for her are aware of that,” said Croatian’s Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlić Radman who succeeded her in the ministerial post.
The biggest challenges facing Croatia in the near future will stem from Croatia’s chairmanship over the EU in the first half of 2020, the top officials said at the conference.
Plenković said that one of the priorities of Croatia’s presidency would be demographic revitalisation.
Negative demographic trends are present in the whole of Europe, he added.
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