Politics

ZAGREB, December 18, 2019 - The presidential candidate of the Workers' Front and Socialist Workers' Party, Katarina Peović, on Wednesday called for termination of the Vatican agreements saying that they are in gross violation of Croatia's secularity. She said that over 1 billion kuna (135 million euro) was allocated from the budget to the Catholic Church annually, while the government was claiming there was no money to increase nurses' wages. "That amount is much higher than 1 billion kuna because there are also non-transparent allocations by local government. For example, Mayor Milan Bandić has set aside 500,000 kuna (67,500 euro)…

ZAGREB, December 18, 2019 - The government on Wednesday dismisses as unfounded the motion for no confidence vote in Education Minister Blaženka Divjak. The motion, initiated by the Social Democratic Party (SDP), was signed by 31 parliamentary deputies of opposition parties. "We absolutely reject all the allegations in the motion, including the claims about the protests of the education sector's employees and also the claims about the educational reform," said Prime Minister Andrej Plenković at the start hi his cabinet's meeting in Zagreb. The explanation provided by the government says that the Plenković cabinet has systematically cared for the improvement…

ZAGREB, December 18, 2019 - The government on Wednesday decided to greenlight a rise in monthly pay of Croatian police officers according to the model of 3% rise plus 1% and an additional 2% throughout 2020. Thus, the wage earned this December and paid in January to police officers with secondary school education will increase by 3%, plus 1% for the wage earned in June 2020 and paid a month later, and in January 2021 they could except the monthly wage increased by 2%. Thus, the monthly wage of police staff who are employed in the positions for which completion…

ZAGREB, December 18, 2019 - Chief State Prosecutor Dražen Jelenić said in Sarajevo on Wednesday that regional cooperation in the prosecution of war crimes should comply with European standards and that currently it was not realistic to expect a separate agreement on the mutual extradition of war crimes suspects. The establishment of a mechanism or the signing of an agreement between countries in the region on the mutual extradition of war crimes suspects in not realistic for the time being, Jelenić said, expressing at the same time readiness to cooperate on the basis of existing laws. Jelenić was participating in…

Yesterday evening HRT (Croatian Radio Television) moderated a debate between all eleven presidential candidates. It lasted over two and a half hours. Here is a summary of the top three candidates’ (Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Zoran Milanović, Miroslav Škoro) positions on abortion, religious education, “Za dom spremi” and gay pride – according to Index on December 18, 2019. Croatian Candidates’ Opening Remarks Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović: I have been your president for 5 years and have been among our people and listened to your problems. I have also repositioned Croatia from a region in Central Europe to a place on the Mediterranean, where it…

ZAGREB, December 18. 2019 - The incumbent president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and the 10 contenders running in the presidential race participated in a two-hour head-to head debate on the national broadcaster's channel HTV 1 on Tuesday evening with just five days to go before the election. Grabar-Kitarović said that during the five years of her first term she had been "the voice of citizens" and that she delivered on the promises she had made to voters. In this context she underscored that she managed to disentangle the country from "the Region" and imposed the issue of demography as one of the…

ZAGREB, December 18, 2019 - Transport and Infrastructure Minister Oleg Butković said on Tuesday that currently investments worth more than 20 billion kuna were being implemented in Croatian transport infrastructure. Asked to comment on the suggestion by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to Croatia to increase investments in the railway sector, Minister Butković said that a lot of investment were being made in the transport infrastructure. He announced that on Friday a 500 million kuna contract on works on the Vukovar-Vinkovci railway would be signed. Also, on 27 December, a contract worth 311 million euro to upgrade the Hrvatski Leskovac-Karlovac…

Just a few months ago we reported about the new traffic fines in Croatia. Today, the Croatian police reported about the results of the implementation of those new fines. In the report, between the numbers of the fines collected and prison days served, the really important piece of the statistics is hidden: in the 11 months of 2019, there are 38 fewer people killed in traffic than in the same period of the last year. Croatian police see that as an indication that the stricter law and bigger fines are effective in preventing the worst traffic accidents. Since the beginning…

ZAGREB, December 17, 2019 - As many as 18 public services in Croatia are available online for Croatians and citizens of the European Union and the European Economic Area (EEA), which puts Croatia among the seven most developed countries. The Public Administration Ministry on Tuesday organised a conference to mark the completion of the implementation of the 505,407 euro project "ePIC - Electronic Public Identification Croatia". The project, implemented by the Croatian Financial Agency (FINA), was co-funded with 379,055 euro from the EU. The overall goal of the ePIC project was to promote the uptake and speed up the use…

ZAGREB, December 17, 2019 - The presidential candidate of the Workers' Front, Katarina Peović, has received support from the Slovenian parliamentary party the Left and a vice-president of the Party of the European Left, Parolo Ferrero, the Workers' Front said on Tuesday. Deputies of the Slovenian Left, which has nine seats in the national parliament and advocates democratic eco-Socialism, expressed their support via a video in which they stressed that "time has come for a new system in which everyone will profit, not just a chosen few." "Parolo Ferrero, vice-president of the Party of the European Left, which has 24…