Politics

ZAGREB, Aug 17, 2020 - Social Democratic Party (SDP) parliamentarian, Pedja Grbin, who has recently announced his aspirations to become the next party president, on Monday presented his document with guidelines for SDP's recovery after its defeat in the Croatian parliamentary elections. Grbin, who posted the document on social media networks, says that "unfortunately, little has changed for the better in the last four years." "The document I have posted contains my ideas, guidelines, and suggestions for the recovery of the SDP," he said on his Facebook profile. The SDP will hold internal elections on 26 September. As of this Monday, candidates will…

As Index writes on the 15th of August, 2020, the European Commission (EC) proposes that only member states which actually respect European Union law receive money from the EU. The German media publication Die Welt writes that several countries could be left without hundreds of millions of euros in that case, including Croatia. "Violations of the law and corruption are much more common in the EU than is generally known. And this phenomenon is spreading, regardless of whether the heads of the government belong to conservative, social democratic or liberal parties," writes the conservative newspaper Die Welt, as reported by DW.…

ZAGREB, Aug 16, 2020 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Saturday that Croatia won the first halftime of the struggle against coronavirus and called for heightened alert in the autumn.  Asked by the press about the current topics, including the developments surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, Plenkovic said that Croatia could be satisfied with the tourist season given the circumstances. He went on to say that the country won the first halftime of the match against COVID-19, and "we must be on high alert in the autumn." Commenting on the outcome of the current tourist season, Plenkovic said that the results seemed better…

The Slovenian Government will introduce a red list for those countries where the epidemiological situation has significantly worsened, and for all those who enter that country from countries that are on the red list, a 14-day quarantine is mandatory. As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 13th of August, 2020, Jelko Kacin, the spokesman of the Slovenian Government for coronavirus, stated that Croatia could very easily be end up on the Slovenian Government's red list due to the large increase in the number of infected people, the Slovenian media reports. According to the media in Croatia's neighbour to the north, Kacin is…

ZAGREB, Aug 13, 2020 - Representatives of youth associations on Thursday held the first working meeting with officials of the Central State Office for Demography and Youth, discussing education, employment, housing, transport connectivity and the situation caused by the coronavirus. "With this meeting, the Office shows how much it cares about cooperation with young people and their involvement in the policies to be carried out. The meeting has helped specify the problems they consider as very important," said State Secretary Zeljka Josic. Josic expressed confidence that their cooperation would be dynamic. As for the situation caused by the coronavirus, Josic said…

ZAGREB, Aug 13, 2020 - The We Can! the political platform said on Thursday that they would request that the law on Zagreb area post-quake reconstruction should provide for the establishment of a single, central institution to lead the reconstruction process, instead of six currently envisaged, so as not to diffuse responsibility. MP and head of the We Can! platform Tomislav Tomasevic told a press conference in front of the government's building that members of the platform had been to Dubrovnik last week to see how that city had been and still was being reconstructed. The conversations held in Dubrovnik made them…

ZAGREB, Aug 11, 2020 - Homeland Movement MPs Vesna Vucemilovic and Ruzica Vukovac said on Tuesday that the state has to support investments to enable the introduction of modern technologies and innovations in agriculture, warning that farms are fighting for survival and have been left to struggle on their own. "Even though for the past ten years we have recorded a constant, rapid, worrying fall in the number of family-run OPG dairy farms, Croatia is not doing anything to prevent the total collapse of milk and meat production," MP Vukovac told a press conference. She added that 50,000 dairy farms had been lost and…

ZAGREB, Aug 11,  2020 - The leader of the Social Democratic Party's (SDP) Split-Dalmatia County branch, Ranko Ostojic, said on Tuesday the announced police reform does not have "anything new", and welcomed that Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic had "finally taken out of the storage something that was completed six year's ago." "The colossal reform , as described by him, has been brought down to cameras that will record police behaviour and changes to Personal ID cards," said Ostojic, the SDP's former interior minister in Zoran Milanovic's cabinet. He added that the problem was in Minister Bozinovic who is "either poorly briefed or imisnformed…

ZAGREB, Aug 10, 2020 - The "Zagreb is Calling You" initiative on Monday staged a performance outside the Zagreb Holding multi-utility conglomerate, owned by the City of Zagreb, saying that its decision to buy new, luxury cars worth HRK 19 million "while the city is falling apart" was shameless, and it called for revoking the decision. During their satirical performance, activists parked toy cars outside Zagreb Holding, calling for the money intended for the new cars to be reallocated for regular city maintenance. Activist Gordana Pasanec said they were embittered by the company's decision to buy 312 new cars and sign a lease…

ZAGREB, Aug 9, 2020 - Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) president Milorad Pupovac said in Sunday's edition of the Vecernji List daily that he would attend a commemoration for Croatian war victims in Skabrnja to share the pain of the locals. "For a long time, I've felt the need to share with my cousins and dear people the pain over the killing in Skabrnja. That's where I come from," he was quoted as saying. In the interview, Pupovac spoke of his view of the August 5 anniversary of the 1995 military Operation Storm and the messages President Zoran Milanovic and Prime…