Politics

ZAGREB, January 1, 2020 - Croatia will do its best to show its ability and vision during its presidency of the Council of the European Union and it expects support from all friendly countries, including Austria of course, Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković said on New Year's Day in Vienna. "It's a great honour and pleasure to be in Austria today on the occasion of Croatia's presidency of the Council of the European Union," Jandroković told reporters. The Croatian parliament speaker and his wife arrived in Vienna at the invitation of his Austrian counterpart Wolfgang Sobotka, to attend the traditional Vienna…

ZAGREB, January 1, 2020 - During the new 2020, the Croatian government plans to step up the fight against migrant smuggling, raise the minimum wage, and introduce a national pension allowance, and those are some of the steps and measures about which Hina has prepared a brief overview. The Interior Ministry plans to continue its activities concerning Croatia's bid to be admitted to the Schengen Area and to establish a visa-free regime with the United States of America by the end of 2020. At the end of 2019, a year in which Croatia met all the technical requirements to enter…

ZAGREB, January 1, 2020 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković on Tuesday extended his best wishes for the New Year, saying that his government would continue working to improve living standards and ensure even development of all regions in Croatia. He said that in the past year the government had consolidated economic growth, continued with tax cuts and structural reforms, launched many infrastructure projects, considerably increased the intake of EU funding and restored the country's credit rating to investment grade. 2020 will be a year of further economic development and international positioning of Croatia, especially during its presidency of the European…

ZAGREB, January 1, 2020 - Croatia took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union on 1 January 2020 from Finland, six and a half years after entering the European bloc. The beginning of the Croatian presidency will be formally marked on 9 January when members of the European Commission are due to come to Zagreb and when a concert on that occasion is going to be held in the Croatian National Theatre. A concert will also be held in Brussels on 15 January to mark the start of the Croatian presidency, and this will coincide with the…

ZAGREB, December 31, 2019 - The president and government's public relations offices on Tuesday rejected claims and accusations by a former adviser to the president, Mate Radeljić, regarding his dismissal. "Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović does not have any need to further comment on the case regarding her former adviser Mate Radeljić. The president has on several occasions publicly reiterated that Mr Radeljić had never been requested by (security) services to resign and that they had discussed his departure several times. We note that the President herself selects and dismisses her advisers," the president's office said in response to Radeljić's claims.…

According to a statement released by RTL this morning, an adviser to the Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović campaign demanded that RTL end yesterday’s debate due to the Croatia President’s fatigue. However, both campaigns had already agreed in advance that they would permit the debate, which began at 20h yesterday, December 30, 2019; to last longer than 90 minutes. In addition, both candidates publicly agreed to continue the debate when asked by RTL moderators during the broadcast, according to Vijesti/RTL on December 31, 2019. The debate, which attracted over 1 million viewers, lasted almost two and a half hours and ended around 22:30h.…

ZAGREB, December 31, 2019 - In the last 20 years Croatia's debt has increased sixfold, HRK 50 billion kuna to nearly 300 billion, the Večernji List daily says in its Tuesday edition, citing figures that show that the HDZ government of Ivo Sanader set the record in borrowing while the most reforms were carried out by the government led by Social Democrat Ivica Račan. The political rise of Zoran Milanović has refuelled debates about his government having been the most spendthrift. The statistics, however, show a different thing. The leader in terms of borrowing was the HDZ government led by…

The German Government has published a map on its official website which highlights the German regions missing the most workers, and what type of workers they are. Despite the overused rhetoric from politicians and indeed the current presidential candidates, Croatian demographics aren't looking very healthy, at all. As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 31st of December, 2019, the Immigration for Qualified Workers Act enters into force on March the 1st, 2020. This law also applies to workers from all countries which are outside of the European Union, including workers from neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, writes buka. This new law provides…

ZAGREB, December 31, 2019 - The European Union has to face the existential problem of population decline affecting several member countries, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković warned in an interview with the Financial Times. In the interview published on Monday on the Financial Times' web site, Plenković said that Croatia and other countries were grappling with a shrinking population because of low birth rates and emigration to more prosperous regions. The population of 10 of the 28 EU member states grew smaller in 2018, including Croatia, Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania. "This is a structural, almost an existential problem for some nations,…

ZAGREB, December 31, 2019 - Foreign news agencies on Monday carried reports of a non-final verdict against former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader and Hungarian MOL energy group executive Zsolt Hernadi, sentenced for bribery to six and two years in prison respectively, stressing that the Croatian court did not accept conclusions by an independent UN commission. Earlier on Monday the former Croatian prime minister and the MOL executive director were found guilty of taking and receiving a bribe in the INA-MOL case. Explaining the retrial verdict, Zagreb County Court judge Maja Štampar Stipić said Sanader had arranged with Hernadi to…