Croatian PM to travel to Ukraine on Wednesday for two-day official visit

NEWS 07.12.202110:11 0 komentara
Josip Regovic/PIXSELL

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic will travel to Ukraine on Wednesday for a two-day official visit to promote political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the two countries.

On 11 December 11, 1991, Ukraine became the third country in the world to recognise Croatia as an independent state, after Slovenia and Lithuania.

Today, Ukraine is interested in Croatia’s experience with the peaceful reintegration of ifs formerly occupied territory. It also sees Croatia as a successful model of Euro-Atlantic integration, given that Croatia was the first country with a war legacy to join the European Union and NATO and that at a part of its territory was occupied at one stage, the Croatian government said.

Croatia attended the inaugural summit of the Crimea Platform in August this year, when all 27 EU member states reaffirmed their position that they would not recognise the annexation of the Crimea by Russia and would not leave Ukraine to stand alone.

Plenkovic, who once served as the head of the European Parliament delegation to Ukraine, will have a tight schedule in Kyiv on Wednesday and Lviv on Thursday.

On the first day of the visit, the Croatian prime minister is scheduled to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Denys Shmyhal and President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom he will sign the Declaration on the European Perspective of Europe.

After meeting with Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, Plenkovic will attend a Ukrainian-Croatian economic forum and open the Croatian Language and Culture Centre at Taras Shevchenko National University. In the evening, he is due to meet with representatives of the Croatian community in Ukraine and participants in the economic forum.

On Thursday, Plenkovic is scheduled to visit the Ukrainian Greek Catholic University in Lviv and deliver a talk there. He is also due to lay flowers at the monument commemorating Croats killed on the eastern front in World War I, and meet with teachers and students of Croatian language and literature as well as with representatives of Croatian organisations.

Plenkovic will be accompanied by a delegation of about 90 business people representing 59 companies, mostly in the field of pharmaceuticals, information technology, agriculture, and tourism.

Economic cooperation

The second meeting of the Ukrainian-Croatian government commission on economic cooperation is also planned.

With a population of 43 million, Ukraine is an interesting market to Croatian companies. Its GDP last year exceeded US$150 billion.

The economic forum is organised to strengthen cooperation between the two countries’ business communities and to better use the free trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine.

The cooperation so far mainly focused on the pharmaceutical, food, IT, chemical, metal and tourism industries. Ukrainian companies are interested in investing in Croatia’s agricultural and energy sectors and Adriatic ports, but there have been no major investment projects yet.

Croatian exports to Ukraine are dominated by the pharmaceutical industry, which account for over 30 per cent of all exports to this country. The Croatian company Belupo is the leader in this sector.

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