Miro Kovac, foreign minister in Criatia’s temporary ‘technical’ government. Photo: BETAPHOTO/HINA/Daniel KASAP/MO

Croatian ministers’ comments about Serbia’s opening of chapters 23 and 24 in its EU accession negotiations Croatian politicians are attempts to use the situation for election campaign purposes, analysts told BIRN.

Tihomir Cipek, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb, said that “the issue of Croatia-Serbia relations is an eternal topic of Croatia’s election campaigns”.

“We can remember how, similarly, the topic of the refugee crisis and relations with Serbia also entered the [previous parliamentary] election campaign in November,” he said.

Serbia officially opened the two chapters on Monday, and Croatian politicians immediately highlighted chapter 23, which covers the judiciary and fundamental rights, as a potential point of conflict.

Croatia wants Serbia’s law on war crimes persecution, which gives it universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, to be changed. Zagreb fears that Belgrade might use the law to prosecute Croats.

“Serbia will have to suspend that law and cooperate with The Hague [war crimes court]. It also has an obligation to provide reparations for the victims of war and ensure that there are representatives of the Croat minority in the Serbian parliament,” Croatia’s foreign and European affairs minister Miro Kovac told media after the EU agreed to open the two chapters on Monday.

But the EU only insisted that Serbia must cooperate with neighbouring countries in prosecuting crimes and avoid the overlapping of jurisdictions.

Croatian war veterans minister Tomo Medved said meanwhile that it was “unacceptable” for Serbia to prosecute people who defended Croatia.

“If they don’t act professionally, in line with the deadlines and revoke this law, Chapter 23 will be blocked for 20, 30 years,” Medved told a press conference.

Zagreb continues to insist on Serbia changing the law as a precondition for Croatia giving a green light for the closing of Chapter 23 in the future.

But Cipek said that the minister’s comments were just symbolic “flag-waving” aimed at pleasing the electorate.

He suggested that centre-right and right-wing parties in Croatia usually play the Serbia card in their election campaigns and then “turn soft” after they come to power.

Retired university professor and political analyst Zarko Puhovski told BIRN meanwhile that both Croatian and Serbian politicians are using the issue for their “domestic political purposes” – the election campaign in Croatia’s case.

But Puhovski said he believed that the Croatian ministers reacted harshly because they thought that Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic was “acting as if he signed nothing”.

“Vucic acts as if his signature on the agreement prescribing that there should be no overlapping of national jurisdictions [between Croatia and Serbia] means nothing, while the ministers act as if the formulation in the agreement has a deeper meaning than it has,” he said.

Puhovski argued that other EU states have similar provisions on universal jurisdiction over war crimes prosecutions and the Croatian ministers should be more concerned about Serbia potentially prosecuting people who live in Croatia without cooperating with the Croatian authorities.

The Croatian ministers are part of a temporary, ‘technical’ administration after the government fell in June. Parliament was dissolved on Friday and early parliamentary elections are scheduled for September 11.