Politics

ZAGREB, December 1, 2019 - Croatia and Germany will co-organise a NATO-EU cooperation conference in Split next June, Defence Ministers Damir Krstičević of Croatia and Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer of Germany agreed in Trogir on Sunday. The conference of European defence ministers and NATO officials will be held on June 8-9, Krstičević told reporters. "Germany is the most important partner in security and defence in Europe and strengthening our cooperation is my priority," he said. The conference will be a sort of transition between Croatia's and Germany's EU presidencies, said Kramp-Karrenbauer. Croatia offers a unique opportunity for us all to meet as…

Croatian teachers are still on strike. Their demands have so far either gone unheard or have been met with unsatisfactory ''solutions'' from the side of the Croatian Government. If you're interested in gaining a better understanding of exactly what Croatian teachers are seeking with their strike, click here for a short and simple explanation about the changes to the coefficients that the unions desire. As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of December, 2019, Friday, which some believed could potentially be the end of the strike, ended anticlimatically and without any concrete results despite lengthy talks between the unions representing…

ZAGREB, December 1, 2019 The Social Democratic Party's (SDP) candidate for president of the republic, Zoran Milanović, said in Virovitica on Saturday that citizens were complaining to him about feeling undervalued and noted that that was how education-sector workers were feeling as well, but that he did not want to manipulate the ongoing teachers' strike the way the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had manipulated a war veterans' protest five years ago. "I don't want to side with them like a hyena, which is what the HDZ did with the protesting war veterans five years ago. It is unfair and inhumane.…

ZAGREB, December 1, 2019 - The Security-Intelligence Agency (SOA) on Saturday responded to a statement by the Serbian Security Service (BIA) saying that it had reported a Croatian and a Serbian national on the suspicion that they had been spying for Croatian security and political structures, including SOA. SOA said the report in question "is a trumped-up report aimed at diverting the attention of the domestic and international public from serious scandals in Serbia, of which two are recent - suspected corruption and illegal trade in weapons between Serbia and foreign countries and the release of a video showing a…

ZAGREB, November 30, 2019 - President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović said on Saturday that women had still not achieved full equality in relation to men either in Croatia or globally, and she underlined the importance of the fight against domestic violence and violence in general. "We have excellent legislation but we must continue to fight prejudices and stereotypes," she said at an event marking the 20th anniversary of the HDZ Women's Association "Katarina Zrinski". Grabar-Kitarović warned that laws were still not respected with regard to equal pay for equal work, and that women, notably young ones, were discriminated against when looking for…

ZAGREB, November 30, 2019 - The presidential candidate of the Workers' Front party and the Socialist Workers' Party, Katarina Peović, said in Rijeka on Saturday Croatia needed a radical change, that it was going in the wrong direction and that the ongoing teachers' strike confirmed that a majority of people thought so too. Asked by the press about the strike, Peović said it had shown long ago that it was no longer just about a 6.11% rise of teachers' job complexity index and that this was a rebellion against the incumbent government and the direction the country had been going…

November 30, 2019 - Croatia has a new high-ranking member of the European Commission, Dubravka Šuica. Who is she? Dubravka Šuica was born on 20th May 1957 in the city of Dubrovnik. After graduating from high school, she moved to Zagreb, where she majored in English and German at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University in Zagreb. Even though she was a teacher in elementary and high schools in her hometown, she is infamous in the Croatian media for her "Russian" accent and stammering during her speech at the European Parliament. Contrarily to that is her current position in the…

ZAGREB, November 30, 2019 - A meeting between Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and the striking education unions ended inconclusively on Friday evening after three hours of talks. Emerging from the meeting, Science and Education Minister Blaženka Divjak said that talks would continue. "Consultations with the unions are continuing," she said. Divjak said she was pushing for a quick solution that would end the strike already on Monday. "Everyone understands that we should really act quickly, so this dialogue will continue," she added. The leader of the primary school teachers' union, Sanja Šprem, said that the strike would continue on Monday.…

ZAGREB, November 29, 2019 - Switzerland is very much interested in further advancing its relations with Croatia, notably in the economic sector, and great cooperation possibilities are opening up in the area of new technologies and tourism, Swiss President Ueli Maurer said in Zagreb on Friday. There are 30,000 Croats in Switzerland, many Croats have dual citizenship and we can say that Croatia has become a nice face in our everyday life, as embodied by your president, Maurer told reporters after meeting with Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović. Maurer is on an official reciprocal visit to Croatia, six months after Grabar-Kitarović…

ZAGREB, November 29, 2019 - The lion's share of education workers who took part in a vote turned down the government's latest pay rise offer so the strike in the education system is continuing, union leaders said on Friday. In a two-day referendum, 95.26% of the strikers in primary schools, 88.93% in secondary schools and 69% at faculties voted against the offer, reporters were told. In primary schools, 31,670 workers voted as did 14,046 in secondary schools. Therefore, said the Croatian Teachers Union, the Independent Union of Secondary School Employees and the Independent Union in Science and Higher Education, the…