Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković hosted his Georgian colleague Irakli Garibashvili, calling the visit a “historic moment” as “It’s the first visit of the Georgian Prime Minister to Croatia.”

In his remark, Plenković stressed Croatia’s support and respect for Georgia’s sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and “endeavours to finally come to a solution that would be a completed Georgian territory under the legal and constitutional control of your government.”

“This is something we wish to you because, unfortunately, Croatia was in a similar situation during the nineties. It took us several years to get back into the legal and constitutional order of the entire territory of the country, and we have a lot of understanding and empathy with what you are doing,” he asserted.

Croatian PM went on to say that the nation was very supportive of Georgia’s European and transatlantic ambitions and aspirations.

“We supported the granting of the candidate status and the European perspective to Georgia in the European Council a year ago. We look very much forward to the fulfilment of the criteria that are set in front of the Georgian government and that further decisions that will be taken at the level of the European Union will be favourable to your ambitions and also towards the next institutional step that is the opening of the accession negotiations.

Also, we very much salute your transformation in the security and defence sector and also greet the opening perspective for NATO membership of Georgia once the conditions are met. Bilaterally, I believe that there are many similarities between our countries. We have agreed today that we should improve our economic relations.

We should strive for more cultural cooperation and, in particular, try to see what are the dots that we need to connect in the new energy context, especially because of your geo-strategic position, our geo-strategic position, and cooperation across Europe in the context of the gradual abandonment of the fossil fuels and more investment into the renewable energy. In that respect, I very much look forward to the activities of your team here in Zagreb, which will certainly be an engine that will provide more ideas and more initiatives in increasing the cooperation between Georgia and Croatia,” he stated.

Plenković also commented on the opening of the Georgian Embassy to Croatia, wishing “a lot of good luck” to the Ambassador and the team.

“And I thank you very much for the invitation to visit Tbilisi. We shall look for the date when I could pay a return visit, just as you did here on the occasion of the 13th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between Georgia and Croatia.”