Croatian Democratic Union

Croatia needs a grand coalition of its two biggest parties - the Social Democratic Party and conservative HDZ - in order to put to rest an "irrational and meaningless" conflict over the country's 20th-century history and focus on more pressing issues, former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader says in his new book.

A meeting of the HDZ's presidency and National Council on Monday decided that the party's political secretary, Davor Ivo Stier and its international relations secretary, Miro Kovac, will be removed from their senior positions after a series of disputes within the centre-right ruling party.

Media reported that a member of the governing Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, is being held in custody in Austria for allegedly doing a Nazi salute during a controversial WWII commemoration in Bleiburg.

Belgrade made that decision in response to Zagreb previously barring Serbia's defense minister from entry.

According to Tanjug, reporting on late on Wednesday, Andrej Plenkovic still managed to spare a few insults at the expense of Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic.

Over 10,000 protesters from all over Croatia, as well as from Bosnia and Herzegovina, gathered on Thursday evening in the centre of the coastal city of Split to protest against Zagreb's upcoming ratification Council of Europe's Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, widely known as the Istanbul Convention.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic remains the only head of state in the Balkan region to lead a political party, having not followed the example of his predecessor, Tomislav Nikolic, who quit the Serbian Progressive Party to assume his new office.

The Croatian government urged parliament on Thursday to ratify a European treaty designed to combat violence against women despite opposition within the ruling party, among conservative groups and from the local Catholic Church.

As a Croatian investigative parliamentary committee prepares to hear the first testimonies on how the country's biggest private company, Agrokor, was created, many irregularities from the privatisation processes of the 1990s are expected to be revealed.

The Croatian parliament on Wednesday will support the establishment of a special investigative committee tasked with revealing what happened to fallen private company Agrokor and its commercial group.

As the Croatian government prepares to spend more on 1990s war veterans, as well as purchasing 12 military jets and covering debts in the health sector, it risks increasing the country's budget deficit, experts warned.