Croatia will push for Bosnia and Herzegovina's further progress in European integration so that it can catch up with the countries in the region, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Wednesday.

“We will advocate the further progress of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is particularly important to us, so that it too can catch up with the countries in the region that are ahead of it,” he said on arriving in Brussels for a summit of EU and six Western Balkan countries’ leaders.

Croatia helped BiH submit its membership application in 2016, last year it fought for BiH to be given candidate status, and now it will make an effort so that BiH receives the best conclusions possible, Plenkovic said.

Last month, in its progress report on BiH, the European Commission recommended the opening of accession negotiations once BiH achieves a sufficient degree of alignment with the membership requirements. In spite of that, a group of countries, including Croatia, is strongly pushing for giving BiH the green light for the negotiations.

Asked about Hungary's threats to veto decisions on Ukraine, Plenkovic said he was moderately optimistic about the outcome of the summit. “I think we will have a compromise package which we will talk about in the next two days and then we'll have a compromise, just as we always find one.”

On Thursday, after the EU-Western Balkans summit, there will be a two-day summit of the EU-27 focusing on enlargement and a review of the multi-annual EU budget.