Politics

ZAGREB, January 30, 2020 - Unemployment in the European Union in December 2019 fell to its lowest level since the EU statistical office Eurostat began publishing monthly data, and there was a slight fall in Croatia as well, which puts Croatia close to the EU average, Eurostat said in a report published on Thursday. The EU28 seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, based on the definition recommended by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), was 6.2% in December 2019, falling by 0.1% compared to November. This is the lowest rate recorded in the EU28 since the start of the EU monthly unemployment series…

ZAGREB, January 30, 2020 - Croatia will conduct a population census in the spring of 2021, and on Thursday the government sent a bill to parliament regulating this most comprehensive and complex statistical survey of the population, households and homes in the country. The census will be carried out from April 1 until May 7, 2021 in two stages. In the first stage, from April 1 to 10, citizens will be able to enter their details in the e-Citizen system, while from April 16 to May 7 census takers will visit households that did not fill in the census form…

ZAGREB, January 30, 2020 - Brexit will not affect tourist travel from Croatia to Great Britain this year, or vice versa, and anyone who has made a booking or plans to travel can do so with their ID cards for the time being, while future arrangements will depend on agreements with the EU, the Croatian Tourism Board (HTZ) said on Thursday. The HTZ said that the positive trend in physical tourism turnover from the British market continued this year. Data from the eVisitor system shows that 1,750 tourists have come to Croatia from Britain so far in January and generated…

ZAGREB, January 30, 2020 - A spokeswoman for the Conflict of Interest Commission confirmed on Thursday that Defence Minister Damir Krstičević had completed an on-line Declaration of Assets on Wednesday, but later withdrew it in order to amend it. "The information that he submitted an on-line Declaration of Assets yesterday is true. The procedure is such that an official completes an on-line declaration and then submits a signed hard copy to the Commission and only then it is published," spokeswoman Martina Jurišić told Hina. However, she added, after he completed the declaration on Wednesday, Krstičević found that there was something…

ZAGREB, January 30, 2020 - EU membership is the Serbian government's strategic commitment, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić said on Wednesday evening, expressing confidence that the Thessaloniki summit in February would be an opportunity for a constructive discussion on the prospects of integration of the Western Balkan countries into the EU and that the Zagreb summit in May would be a chance to make this agenda even more specific. Dačić expressed hope that the Croatian presidency of the Council of the European Union would be successful in every respect and that Serbia would continue to progress in the EU accession…

A Croatia gay couple, who want to become foster parents, have a message for haters: “We are a country full of hypocrisy,” they point out in yesterday's interview with RTL Direkt. Ivo Šegota and Mladen Kožić, who are in a life partnership, applied to become foster parents in 2017. After passing extensive background checks, screening tests and obtaining their foster care certification, their application was rejected by the Social Welfare Center in Zagreb. In December 2019, the Croatian Administrative Court handed down a decision which ordered the center to consider the couple’s foster parent application based on its merit only.…

ZAGREB, January 29, 2020 - Croatia and Bulgaria recorded the highest increase of organic farming area in the European Union in the period from 2012 to 2018, says a report by the European statistical office - Eurostat. The total organic area in the European Union (EU) was 13.4 million hectares in 2018, corresponding to 7.5% of the total utilised agricultural area, shows Eurostat's report released on Wednesday. This represents an increase of 34% between 2012 and 2018. Eurostat explains that organic area covers land fully converted to organic farming and areas under conversion. Organic farming is a way of agricultural…

ZAGREB, January 29, 2020 - Construction Minister Predrag Štromar on Wednesday said that he would dismiss the State Real Estate Agency (APN)'s acting director Krešimir Žunić (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ), after media outlets discovered that he had purchased a state-subsidised flat under the so-called POS scheme provided by that agency. Štromar told reporters that he had submitted all the relevant documents in relation to Žunić to the prosecutorial authorities, who bought a flat in Zadar last year under the APN scheme which enabled him and his son to purchase the flat for a discount price of €975 per square metre.…

ZAGREB, January 29, 2020 - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said in Zagreb on Wednesday that the first month of Croatia's EU presidency had been intensive and successful, and that the first major goal had been accomplished with the completion of the procedure for Great Britain's exit from the EU. In an interview in Europe House, held as part of the Croatian Radio Europanel programme, Plenković said that Brexit was the worst decision the UK could have made and recalled that it would not bring any dramatic changes for EU citizens and companies, notably those from Croatia. In the next…

ZAGREB, January 29, 2020 - Assistant Health Minister Vili Beroš, nominated by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković to succeed the just-dismissed Minister Milan Kujundžić, said on Wednesday morning that later in the day he would enter some changes in his Declaration of Assets, which happened in the last two years. Beroš told the N1 commercial broadcaster that those changes had happened since he became the assistant minister, explaining that he had refinanced two loans taken in 2008 and 2016 and was now paying them at a more favourable interest rate arranged by the Croatian Medical Chamber for its members. In 2016,…