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The Gospić case in Brussels
Brussels, September 10, 2026 - The proposal by Možemo MEP Gordan Bosanac received the necessary majority support at this morning's meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions to fast-track the petition from the citizens of Gospić regarding the illegal dumping of hazardous waste in their city, bypassing the standard waiting list.
“The majority of parliamentary groups on the Committee accepted my request for the European Parliament to hear the voice of the people of Gospić, and they will have the opportunity to present the details of the situation to Members of the European Parliament and the European Commission as early as the Committee’s October or November session,” Bosanac commented, adding that the initiative will now have the opportunity to directly call on the European Commission to get involved in resolving the problem in Gospić.
The request for an urgent procedure passed despite opposition from the European People's Party, the largest political group in the EP, which voted against the citizens of Gospić coming to the European Parliament.
“Since HDZ is a member of the EPP, we are seeing a repeat of the situation from the extraordinary session of the Croatian Parliament in Gospić, where they also refused to hear representatives from the 'Gospić is our home' initiative—fortunately, they didn't succeed here.”, the Možemo MEP pointed out, assessing that HDZ is consistently committed to downplaying the danger of water and soil contamination in Gospić.
A second request from Bosanac and the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, calling for a debate on Gospić at next week's plenary session, was watered down by HDZ and the European People's Party, since they could not block it entirely.
As a result, the debate, prompted by the pollution in Gospić, will be held under the title “Protecting people’s health against toxic substances”, or “Protecting human health from toxic compounds,” instead of the title proposed by Bosanac “Protecting human health from PFAS forever chemicals and other toxic substances: the recent case of contaminated groundwater in Croatia.”
“Although they clearly didn't have the courage to completely remove the Gospić topic from the European Parliament's agenda, the European People's Party resorted to changing the title of the debate. I find their move to hold the debate next Thursday after 3 p.m., when journalists from EU member states are usually already traveling back to their home countries, to be particularly malicious.”, said Bosanac.
In conclusion, he emphasized that he believes that despite the late timing, representatives from Croatia will participate in the debate to clarify before the European Parliament the scale of the massive and dangerous PFAS and other hazardous substance pollution of water and soil in Gospić, and to place on the agenda the issue of political accountability for such inefficiency in the waste management and nature protection system in Croatia as an EU member state.
