On Tuesday, 20 June, Minister Grlić Radman attended the kick-off conference of Croatia’s EUSAIR/AII presidency.
“The essence of European macroregional cooperation is to build trust and joint action, pulling the focus away from particular goals in favour of a larger, universal gain. The EU’s macroregional strategies are at the heart of the European integration process as unique tools assisting in building the common European space,” the minister said.
By enlarging its membership to include North Macedonia in 2020 and San Marino 2022, the AII became a macroregional strategy with the largest number of non-EU member states and the only one with more non-members than members.
Grlić Radman said that Croatia considered EU enlargement an extremely important issue, including its importance for the EUSAIR. “We continually advocate EUSAIR participating countries’ accession to the EU, based on individual achievement in meeting the criteria. Therefore, we welcome the fact that the importance of the link between the EUSAIR and EU enlargement has been recognized by all the participating countries, which is why this topic has been proposed as a new horizontal theme of the Strategy, meaning that its aspects will be included in all thematic areas of cooperation,” he said.
Also addressing the event were Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković, Minister of Tourism and Sports Nikolina Brnjac, Minister of Regional Development and EU Funds Šime Erlić, and DG REGIO Director for the European Territorial Cooperation Slawomir Tokarski.
