The Croatian flag will be raised at the Centre’s headquarters in Reading on 30 June after Croatia became ECMWF’s 22nd Member State on 1 January 2016. The ceremony will take place in the presence of representatives from all ECMWF Member States gathered for the Centre’s summer Council meeting.
Accession to full membership marks the next step for co-operation between ECMWF and Croatia. As a Member State, Croatia now has access to a share of the Centre’s supercomputing and archive resources for its own use, as well as voting rights at the ECMWF Council. It continues to have full access to ECMWF’s products and services as it did under the co-operation agreement it concluded with the Centre in December 1995.
Mr Ivan Čačić, the Director of the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service (DHMZ) and Croatia’s Permanent Representative to the WMO, said he was delighted that Croatia had established this formal link with ECMWF. He stressed that Croatia would work to “support the potential and position of ECMWF as an organisation and also as a crucial entity of the European Meteorological Infrastructure”.
ECMWF Director-General Florence Rabier said that, after some 20 years of working closely with Croatia as a Co-operating State and as a member of the ALADIN consortium, it was “excellent news that Croatia will now have an opportunity to be part of our Council, hence helping to set the Centre’s strategic direction for the years to come”.