Minister Tolušić expressed his satisfaction and cited changes and improvements that enabled Croatia to finally reach significant support from available EU funds
According to the Finance Ministry’s data, Croatia made use of 506 million Euro from EU funds in the first five months of this year. Compared to last year, when Croatia received a total of 558 million Euro in all of 2015 and 548 million Euro in 2014, this is a strong success by the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds as well as other bodies in the system for control and management of EU funds, a report by the latter Ministry stated, as reported by Tportal.hr on June 1, 2016.
It also emphasized that since EU accession in 2013, Croatia withdrew from EU funds only a slightly larger amount than the one it deposited, while the result of the first five months of the current year is “an indication of good to-date work and a sign of positive change with a rise in utilization of funds, spurring investment and economic recovery of Croatia.”
The majority of the 506 million Euro withdrawn in the first five months, according to Ministry data, was funnelled into projects in the departments of transport and environment protection, development of entrepreneurship, renovation of student housing, science institution projects and others.
“These numbers show that Croatia has the ability to grow and develop into a competitive regional leader with the help of EU funds,” Minister of regional development and EU funds Tomislav Tolušić commented.
His Ministry cites that some of the most important changes in 2016, leading to this success, are simplification of systems and EU funds procedures, Project Database formation, strengthening of administrative capacity, coordination of bodies in the System for Management and Control of EU Funds, coordination of counties and regional development agencies and activation of a procedure to adapt operative programs.
