ZAGREB, 9 June, 2021 - Croatian President Zoran Milanović said on Wednesday that the 2022 French presidential election would be crucial for the "European story" and that he hoped Emmanuel Macron would be re-elected.

The French president was slapped by a man from a welcoming crowd during a visit to the south of France on Tuesday, as shown by video footage of the incident.

Milanović described the incident as "bizarre," saying that it was "unbelievable that security allowed that person into that area."

"This only shows that next year in European politics will be cursed because Macron is going for re-election. I would like him to win, rather than Le Pen and that generally claustrophobic and nervous policy of suspecting everyone who is not white and Christian, and unfortunately European policy has turned into that," Milanović said in response to questions from the press during a visit to the northern island of Krk.

"In Germany, whoever wins in September will more or less continue the present policy, which is moderate and well-balanced, while things in France are a bit different," the Croatian president said.

For more about Politics in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, 4 May, 2021 - The French Institute in Croatia has on the occasion of its 100th anniversary launched a Hospitality programme which in cooperation with various institutions enables close public contact with artists.

The programme is adapted to Croatia's specific context, featuring the consequences of the health crisis and earthquakes that hit Zagreb and Sisak and Petrinja in central Croatia and is aimed at developing a programme of valorisation of Croatian artists in the premises of the French Institute where they can present their works and establish contact with a new audience.

The planned encounters are aimed at enabling a privileged experience and relationship with artists and their works, something that has been absent during this period of restricted encounters.

The institute has called on artists to participate in the programme, saying that they will be issued with a 'carte blanche' to take over the institute's premises for specific encounters with the public and to present their works.

For more about diplomacy in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, February 29, 2020 - This year's Francophone Film Month and a special programme marking the 50th anniversary of Francophony will open with film screenings in Zagreb's Tuškanac cinema on March 3.

Half a century ago, more than 20 countries and governments signed an agreement on the establishment of the International Organisation of la Francophonie, which promotes the French language and francophone cultures and today brings together 88 member countries and governments.

The French language and culture will be celebrated with events to be organised by the embassies of Belgium, Canada, France, Morocco and Switzerland, the French Alliance network in Croatia and numerous associations and Croatian institutions.

The event's programme, to be staged in 11 Croatian cities in the form of 100 events to be organised by 30 partners, features francophone films, music, fashion, theatre and flash mobbing.

On International Francophony Day, March 20, the central event of the Month of Francophony will take place at noon in Zagreb's Zrinjevac park as well as in 22 other central and eastern European countries - a major flash mob for all lovers of French culture wishing to demonstrate their love of the French language and francophone values.

The French Embassy and the French Institute will organise two meetings with world-renowned linguist Bernard Cerquiglini - at the French Institute in Zagreb on March 25 and at the City Library in Zadar on March 26.

More news about relations between Croatia and France can be found in the Politics section.

SPLIT, February 9, 2020 - Croatia will showcase its rich maritime culture and heritage at two festivals in France from 3 to 13 April, it was said at a press conference in Split earlier in the week.

The presentation is organised by the Cronaves Association from Split.

Croatia will be presented at the festival Escale a Sete, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and is taking place in the largest fishing port of the Mediterranean, Sete, as well as in the nearby village of Marseillan in southern France.

"Four old Croatian vessels will travel to France by land in trucks: the Komiža gundula and sandula boats, the gajeta boat 'Foranka' from Hvar and the gajeta boat 'Mila' from Šepurine on the island of Prvić. The lugger 'Nerezinac', which the Ministry of Culture included in the List of Protected Cultural Goods in 2010 as a valuable example of traditional shipbuilding, will travel to Sete by sea from the port in Mali Lošinj," said the president of the Cronaves Association, Plamenko Bavčević, adding that in the five years of the association, this was the sixth project representing Croatia at European maritime festivals.

He said Escale a Sete comprised the maritime heritage of the entire Europe, including ethno, tourist and gastronomy products, as well as workshops on boat and fishing net making in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

The biggest attraction from Croatia to be presented is a 22-metre sailing ship with two masts, the lugger 'Nerezinac', built in the 19th century, which was last year renovated and turned into a interpretation centre for navigation. It is the first sailing ship of its kind to be renovated in the Adriatic region. It is moored at a pier in Mali Lošinj in front of the Museum of Apoxyomenos, and it displays and interprets the long and rich maritime history of Lošinj in a modern, interesting and interactive way.

Escale a Sete is the largest festival of maritime heritage in the Mediterranean, with participants from most European countries. About 300,000 people visit it each year.

More news about relations between Croatia and France can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, January 7, 2020 - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday ahead of his meeting with Prime Minister Andrej Plenković in Paris that he wished the summit meeting, set for May in Zagreb, would be successful and that changes to the methodology in the negotiation process was a precondition for opening negotiations with candidate countries.

"I share your endeavours that the summit in Zagreb in May achieves unity and that it is a success for Europe. France has proposed a new method for the enlargement process so that it is not just a bureaucratic process but a truly political path forward which can be accelerated and reversed and which contains conditions and also, concrete benefits for candidate countries," Macron said, who together with Prime Minister Plenković issued a statement to the press ahead of a working lunch in Elysee Palace.

"I would like to underscore France's wish for the summit in Zagreb to be a success," Macron added.

Plenković will present Macron with the programme and main aspects of Croatia's presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2020.

The two statesmen will discuss the negotiation framework for future relations between the European Union and the United Kingdom, negotiations on the new multiannual financial framework, preparations for the Conference on the Future of Europe, and the EU-Southeast Europe Summit in Zagreb in May. In that context the two officials are supposed to discuss the further enlargement of the Union.

At the EU summit last October, France, together with The Netherlands, vetoed the opening of accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania.

Assuming the six-month presidency of the Council of the EU on January 1, Croatia wants to unblock that process because it considers that there is no alternative to the European prospects for southeast European countries.

"I'm glad that President Macron expressed optimism regarding the success of the Zagreb summit. That meeting is exceptionally important for us. It is in our interest for countries to be stable and to implement economic and social reforms," Prime Minister Plenković said.

More news about Croatia and the EU can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, December 13, 2019 - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković met with French President Emmanuel Macron on the margins of the European Union's summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday evening for the talks on the bilateral relations and on the policy for further enlargement of the European Union.

The Plenković-Macron talks focused also on the prospects of two aspirants – North Macedonia and Albania – of being admitted to the European Union.

This past October, France, together with the Netherlands and Denmark, vetoed the opening of the accession talks with Skopje and Tirana, insisting on the overhaul of the negotiating process. Therefore, the European Council failed to reach a unanimous decision on opening the accession negotiations with those two candidates, despite the fact that the European Commission gave a green-light for the start of their membership talks.

Croatia, which is chairing the European Union in the first half of 2020, is going to organise a summit meeting between the EU and six south-eastern European aspirants in Zagreb in early May.

To this end, Croatia would like to reach a consensus among the EU member-states so that North Macedonia and Albania could continue their European journey, which would be a positive signal to the other candidates in their neighbourhood.

Plenković and Macron also agreed to resume their talks in early January in Paris.

During the first day of the two-day summit meeting in Brussels, the Croatia's premier held several bilateral meetings and some of his interlocutors were the president of the European People's Party (EPP), Donald Tusk, and the European Council President, Charles Macron.

On Friday, Plenković is expected to meet the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, as well as the new Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. Finland is the current chair of the EU.

On Thursday evening, the EC President Charles Michel announced that at the summit all the member-states except Poland agreed on carbon neutrality until 2050.

"In the light of the latest available science and of the need to step up global climate action, the European Council endorses the objective of achieving a climate-neutral EU by 2050, in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. One Member State, at this stage, cannot commit to implement this objective as far as it is concerned, and the European Council will come back to this in June 2020," reads one of the conclusions of the European Council.

Also, the participants in the summit meeting agreed on extending by six more months economic sanctions imposed on Russia. EU sanctions targeting Russia's finance, energy and defence industries will stay in place until mid-2020. The decision comes after the leaders of Russia and Ukraine met in Paris to seek a solution to Ukraine conflict.

More news about relations between Croatia and France can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, October 7, 2019 - President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović has asked her French counterpart Emanuel Macron to ensure a review of the decision to suspend the search for missing Croatian sea captain Dino Miškić and his crew who many believe could be alive ten days after their ship sank in the Atlantic.

In a letter, Grabar-Kitarović asked Macron to use his authority to ensure a review of the decision to suspend the search as long as there is even a slim chance and hope that it might be successful, her office said on Sunday.

The ship Bourbon Rhode, with a 14-member crew on board, sank on September 26 in the Atlantic, about 2,000 kilometres from the nearest mainland, the French island of Martinique. The search lasted for a week and resulted in the discovery of three crew members who were alive and four who died.

The crew were mostly Ukrainians and it also included one Russian, one South African and one Filipino. The captain was Dino Miškić, a Croatian national.

The French Regional Operational Centre for Surveillance and Rescue (CROSS) on the island of Martinique said on Friday that the search for the missing members of the crew of the Bourbon Rhode had been suspended.

After the official announcement that the search for the seven missing crew members had been suspended, the Mikšić family on Saturday appealed to the Croatian prime minister, president and government to help them ensure that the search continued.

More news about relations between Croatia and France can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, September 7, 2019 - The fifth edition of the Rendez-vous au cinema programme that promotes the French cinematography will be conducted in more than a score of cinema theatres throughout Croatia from 11 to 22 September, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC) has recently reported.

This year, there will be six films, and two of them are the works of Louis Marie Malle: Elevator to the Gallows and Zazie in the Metro. Also, two are contemporary films with Mediterranean topics: Corniche Kennedy by Dominique Cabrera and Catch the Wind by Gael Morel. There is also is animated film and a documentary, Makala by Emmanuel Gras, in this programme.

Filmmaker Cabrera will arrive in Croatia for this event.

Rendez-vous au cinema is being organised by the French Institute in Croatia, HAVC and the Kino Mreža network.

More film news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, August 19, 2019 - Some of the works of the famous French photographer Brigitte Lacombe will be put on display in Zagreb's French Pavilion gallery within the Student Centre from 13 to 28 September.

The exhibition includes a total of 40 photographs that have resulted through her cooperation with influential filmmakers, the PRiredba Studio marketing agency said in a press release on Monday.

According to the official biography of this New York-based French artist, she received the Eisenstaedt Award for Travel Photography (2000), the Lifetime Achievement Award for Photography (Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, 2010), and the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Travel & Portraiture (2012).

"As a special photographer, Lacombe has worked on many film sets starting with Alan Pakula’s 'All the President’s Men' and 'Fellini’s Casanova' both in 1975, and Steven Spielberg’s 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in 1976."

She has worked on films by Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols, Anthony Minghella, Spike Jonze, Bennett Miller, Lynne Ramsay, David Mamet, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Bernardo Bertolucci, Sydney Pollack, Sam Mendes, Michael Haneke, and others.

Her photographs have appeared in publications around the world including Vanity Fair, GQ, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, New York Magazine and so on.

More culture news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, May 24, 2019 - Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Minister Marija Pejčinović Burić and French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday in Paris, where Pejčinović Burić took part in the presentation of candidates for the post of Secretary General of the Council of Europe, that Croatia and France had stepped up bilateral cooperation.

Pejčinović Burić was on a visit to Paris on May 22-23, where she held a number of bilateral and multilateral meetings.

She is running of the post of Secretary General of the Council of Europe against her Belgian counterpart Didier Reynders.

The Parliamentary Assembly will proceed with the election of the next Secretary General during its June part-session.

The talks with Le Drian focused on the "year-long implementation of the action plan for the Strategic Partnership 2018-2021. The two ministers agreed the political dialogue had been stepped up and bilateral cooperation intensified, notably in the sectors of the economy, home affairs, culture, science and education," the Croatian foreign ministry said in a press release.

The ministers also talked about France's support to Croatia's entering the Schengen zone and the euro area, the ministry said, adding that special attention was attached to cooperation aimed at strengthening stability in Southeast Europe and EU prospects of Southeast European countries.

Pejčinović Burić also held talks with UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay about UNESCO's strategic transformation and initiatives regarding education, artificial intelligence and biodiversity.

More news about relations between Croatia and France can be found in the Politics section.