German Chancellor Angela Merkel to visit Zagreb today

(Patria) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Zagreb today to meet with Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and participate in a major pre-election rally of HDZ and the European People's Party (EPP) ahead of the European elections.

Manfred Weber, the leading candidate for the European People's Party for the President of the European Commission, will also attend the EPP and HDZ pre-election rally, which will be held on Saturday evening at Cibona, Croatian media reported.

Merkel will discuss relations between the two countries and European issues with Plenković on Saturday afternoon at Banski dvori.

Croatia will preside over the European Union in the first half of 2020, and will then hand over the presidency to Germany, which is next in the second half of next year. The Chancellor strongly supports the European perspective of the Western Balkan countries, and Croatia is an important interlocutor in the process of resolving issues related to the Euro-Atlantic integration of the countries of Southeast Europe.

Topics of the meeting in Zagreb will also include Croatia's entry into the Schengen area, plans for entering the eurozone, the situation in Southeast Europe, as well as migration.

This is the first bilateral visit of the German Chancellor to Croatia since 2011 and the first pre-election rally outside Germany she will attend.