Starovic: Croatia can block Serbia's EU path over border disputes

BELGRADE - Serbian Minister of European Integration Nemanja Starovic said on Monday Croatia could block Serbia's EU path over border disputes, the border on the Danube River being the most complex one.

"The border on the Danube is certainly the most complex issue as Croatia insists on the borders of cadastral municipalities defined in the 19th century, in spite of the fact that the course of the Danube has been changed by the forces of erosion. This is about Croatia's ambition to take control of more than 11,000 hectares of Serbian territory on the left bank of the Danube," Starovic said on Pink TV in a comment on a recent statement by Croatian PM Andrej Plenkovic in which he highlighted the border dispute as one of the outstanding issues between the two countries.

Starovic said there was no doubt Croatia would take the issue of the border dispute to the highest level at the least favourable time for Belgrade and that it would not hold back from making the ratification of Serbia's accession agreement with the EU conditional upon taking control of a part of Serbian territory.

"Whether it will succeed in this, we will see. Slovenia tried to set a condition for Croatia's entry in 2013 - however, it was suggested to it that that was not possible. But we see that, when there is notable political will, Bulgaria can block North Macedonia for years," Starovic said.

He said the generally accepted thalweg principle - under which the border line runs along the centre of the mainstream of an international river - was sacrosanct for Serbia.

"Looking downstream, it means that everything that is situated left, or east, of the centre of the Danube mainstream unambiguously represents the sovereign territory of the Republic of Serbia, and that is something we cannot and must not give up on," Starovic said.

He said Croatia had an ambition to take control of the strategic islands of Vukovarska ada and Sarengradska ada "to put us in a situation where, say, our river flotilla units cannot sail out of Novi Sad and head to Bezdan without consent of the neighboring country."

Serbia's position is that the border line should run along the centre of the river, as mandated by international law, while Croatia wants the border established in line with the cadastre.