ISLAMABAD: Croatian foreign minister set foot in Pakistan for the first time in history on Thursday, and by the end of the day, Islamabad had a fresh working agenda stretching from port deals to visa facilitation.
Dr. Gordan Grlic Radman, Croatia’s Minister for Foreign and European Affairs, landed in the capital for a one-day official visit. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Ishaq Dar sat down with him for delegation-level talks covering an unusually long list of sectors proof, diplomats say, that both sides want more than another polite meet-and-greet.
Pakistan Croatia Bilateral Relations
Trade, investment, agriculture, labour mobility, visa facilitation, education, defence, climate change, tourism, infrastructure, IT, Dar and Radman worked through all of it. The conversation didn’t stay narrowly bilateral either. Both ministers weighed in on Pakistan’s wider ties with the European Union and swapped views on regional and global flashpoints sitting on both governments’ radar.
Ports dominated a good chunk of the discussion. Dar and Radman zeroed in on the idea of linking Pakistani and Croatian ports directly, treating maritime connectivity as a building block for economic integration rather than a side note. The officials in Islamabad increasingly see Croatia’s Adriatic coastline as a shortcut into European trade circuits a route that sidesteps the usual bottlenecks and could hand Pakistani exporters a genuinely new entry point into the EU market.
Trade and Ports
Neither side wanted Thursday’s momentum to evaporate once the delegations packed up. Dar and Radman locked in a commitment to hold the next round of Bilateral Political Consultations before the year is out, or early in 2027 at the latest a concrete follow-up mechanism rather than a vague promise to “stay in touch.”
Radman’s day in Islamabad didn’t end with Dar. Apart from that, he also had appointments with Pakistan’s top brass, including the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, which says a lot about the importance of this visit to Islamabad.
Croatia Pakistan Trade
Croatia stands to gain too. A market of more than 240 million people doesn’t come along often, and agriculture, IT, and infrastructure all look like natural entry points for Croatian firms eyeing South Asia for the first time.
Diplomatic analysts watching Pakistan’s EU outreach argue Croatia matters here for reasons bigger than its own economy. Zagreb sits inside the EU, which means a warmer Pakistan-Croatia relationship could translate into a quiet advocate for Islamabad in Brussels useful leverage as Pakistan keeps pressing for better market access and more favourable trade terms with the bloc, GSP+ preferences included.
But one day will not change everything between the two. Yet something that wasn’t there on Wednesday is present today in Islamabad and Zagreb: an agreement, a future meeting scheduled, and a first-ever visit.
