There’s another kiss controversy, but this time it seems more clumsy than creepy.
Croatian Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić-Radman’s ham-fisted attempt to greet his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, with a kiss sparked a chorus of chastisement in both Croatia and Germany last week.
Grlić-Radman apologized on Saturday, after his awkward maneuver had made the rounds on social media.
“We ministers always greet each other cordially,” Grlić-Radman was quoted as saying by Croatian daily Večernji List. “If someone saw something bad in that, then apologies to whoever took it that way,” he said, adding that his diplomatic offering “might have turned out awkwardly.”
The gawky greeting took place at an EU enlargement conference in Berlin on Thursday that brought together foreign ministers from member states and candidate countries. As the ministers gathered in front of the media for a group picture, Grlić-Radman, 65, first reached out to shake Baerbock’s hand, then leaned forward for a kiss.
Baerbock, 42, swiftly turned her head to present her cheek, and laughed off the incident — but it had already been captured by cameras at the event.
Grlić-Radman’s unsmooth move is reminiscent of an incident involving Luis Rubiales, the former Spanish football chief who was compelled to resign after he forcibly kissed footballer Jenni Hermoso at the Women’s World Cup final.
The incident sparked outcries in both Germany — with the tabloid newspaper Bild labelling it a “kiss-attack” — and Croatia, where several public figures castigated the foreign minister.
“It’s a completely inappropriate gesture,” prominent Croatian women’s rights activist and former lawmaker Rada Borić told Jutarnji list on Friday.
“It seems that the minister doesn’t know the protocol, because a ‘warmer greeting’ should happen with people with whom you have a relationship that allows greeting with a kiss. And here it is clear that such a relationship does not exist,” Borić added.
Former Croatian Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor also criticized Grlić-Radman. “Forced kissing of women is also called violence, right?” Kosor wrote on X.
Baerbock declined to comment on the maladroit kiss when asked about it during a press conference on Saturday. After a meeting in Baku with Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, Baerbock told reporters simply: “We didn’t talk about kissing today.”
