Congratulating the people of Pula on their day, he recalled the time when “Croatian Partisans added Istria to Croatia” and Istria, notably Pula, was not populated only by Croats. Tens of thousands of people left Istria, he said.
“In order to be able to morally ask some things from others, we must admit what happened in Istria. I see this level of maturity and honesty in Istria. I’m glad to look at this multiculturalism and this unity, the awareness of one’s own shortcomings and omissions, but also the energy and desire to build better, to let go of some things and move on,” the president said, urging the people of Istria to absorb as much from EU funds as possible.
“Croatia… now lives the European reality. But Europe is also a Europe of first, second and even third-rank states,” he said, adding that one must never consent to that.
“We invested our sovereignty in Europe… That has its price, its moral obligation. As a state, we renounce certain rights… to invest them in a common project, which is Europe, and to get something out of it,” Milanović said, adding that “Croatia is taking too little money from the European Union.”
The only measure of success of both state and local politics is “solely the success in taking the money that is ours,” he said.
“That’s the goal we should strive for, that’s the key task of Croatian politics. The war in Ukraine won’t solve the big problems in any way. I don’t like the expression ‘that is not our war’, but we must watch what we do, say and where we align ourselves and look out for our interests.”
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