President Zoran Milanovic said on Monday in New York that the most important issue for Croatia would be "the fate of the European Union over the next 10 years" and that he measured the success of Croatia's EU membership "by the amount of absorbed EU funds."

The Croatian president, who arrived in New York on Sunday for the 76th meeting of the United Nations’ General Assembly, on Monday addressed the event called “Emerging Crises and Competing Narratives” within the World Leaders Forum at Columbia University.

During the conversation, he had as part of the “Emerging Crises and Competing Narratives” event, Milanovic said that when Britain had decided to get out of the EU he had asked himself “what is the fate of the EU if these guys are off.”

“This is something that haunts me today, as well,” he said describing the EU as probably the most complex political association in the history of humankind.

“It (the EU) is difficult to govern, It lacks political legitimacy, it is mostly run by bureaucrats, non-elects,” he explained.

For my country the question is what comes of the EU over the next ten years, Milanovic said underscoring that this was a “paramount question”.

The Croatian president said that he did not believe that some other members could follow the example of the U.K.

The southeast of Europe aspires for EU membership, however, he does not think that all of them are sufficiently motivated to join the Union.

Commenting on Serbia, Milanovic said that the “the hard thing” is that the current Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was one of the most prominent and loudest warmongers in the 1990s and “so it is an obstacle”.

Milanovic added that Serbia “is not harbouring strong intentions” to join the Union, whereas North Macedonia and Albania “are trying hard ” and striving for membership.

As for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, Milanovic said that the Taliban retook control of that country and all NATO troops had left that Asian state.

Milanovic believes that Croatian troops should have left that mission 10 years ago after the killing of Osama bin Laden, the founder of the Islamic militant organization al-Qaeda.

He added that he “never deluded himself” about bringing democracy to Afghanistan.