Brussels, 17/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is preparing to take action against Croatia over the European Arrest Warrant and is expected, in the next few hours, to start the “consultation” laid down in Article 39 of Croatia's accession treaty (see EUROPE 10910 and 10915) to ascertain member states' views on the penalties to be applied.
At a press conference on Tuesday 17 September, Commissioner Viviane Reding confirmed the launch of the proceedings and the highly probable issuing of sanctions, which might include keeping Croatia outside the Schengen Area through the scrapping of funding for it to join Schengen.
On Friday 13 September, the College of EU Commissioners backed the issuing of sanctions against Croatia, as suggested by Commissioner Reding, President Barroso and Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Füle. Irritated by the Croatian government's foot-dragging over an issue that the Commission views as urgent, Reding expressed disappointment. She said a huge amount of work had been done on the justice and rule of law chapters (23 and 24) that Croatia had to fulfil before it could join the EU and Reding had finally agreed to sign, even insisting there was no need for a Cooperation and Verification Mechanism for Zagreb (unlike for Romania and Bulgaria, which remain outside Schengen), but three days before accession everything had been jeopardised. The Commission says its trust was misplaced and it has been trying to get Croatia to do a U-turn since then.
At the end of June, three days before the country officially joined the EU (on 1 July 2013), the Croatian government introduced amendments to the effect that crimes committed before 2002 were not covered by the European Arrest Warrant, thus introducing immunity for war crimes committed in the Yugoslav wars. After a number of letters from the Commission, Croatia finally undertook at the end of August to comply with the Commission's requests and put a rapid end to the law, but Zagreb's latest plans talk about not changing the legislation until July 2014, which the Commission says is far too late. Reding said that the country had been able to change a law in a matter of days in 2013, so why couldn't it be changed back again in a few days too? The Commissioner has prepared a proposal over the past week for launching consultations of the member states. Once it has sounded out the various countries, the Commission will then recommend sanctions, which could take the form of greater surveillance of Croatia in the form of a CVM or the freezing of EU funding. (SP/transl.fl)