Politics

ZAGREB, October 29, 2019 - Europe and the Arab world need better coordination of efforts aimed at tackling migration, an issue that dominates the relations between the two blocs, it was said at the 4th European Union-Arab World Summit in Athens on Tuesday. Our biggest challenge is migration. This issue is not restricted to geography, it is not just the Sahel, Libya, Syria, Greece and Turkey. It is spreading everywhere in the world and has become a test of our solidarity and humanity and our readiness to counter organised crime and protect our borders, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said…

ZAGREB, October 29, 2019 - The Zagreb Municipal Labour Court ruled on Tuesday that the president of the Croatian Journalists Association (HND), Hrvoje Zovko, had been fired unlawfully by the Croatian Radio and Television (HRT) public broadcaster last year. Under the ruling, which may be appealed, Zovko is to be reinstated as an editor at HRT. In a statement to Hina, Zovko said that he had expected such a verdict and was satisfied with it. "The verdict confirms what I have been saying from day one," he said. The dispute between Zovko and HRT ensued after the HRT management last…

ZAGREB, October 29, 2019 - Inspector-General Andrija Mikulić of the ruling HDZ party has entered incorrect data in his declaration of assets by failing to declare as many as 687 square metres of his house on the island of Krk, the RTL broadcaster's Potraga programme has discovered. Mikulić stated in his declaration of assets that his house and the land it was built on measured 180 square metres while an inspection of land books showed that the property in question measures 867 square metres. When contacted by RTL for a clarification, Mikulić said that the mistake was not intentional and…

ZAGREB, October 29, 2019 - Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlić Radman said on Monday that the extension of the time frame for the departure of Great Britain from the European Union (Brexit) would not affect the priorities which Croatia had set for its rotating presidency of the EU in the first half of 2020. Earlier on Monday, the ambassadors of the EU member-states agreed to a Brexit extension to 31 January 2020, with the option for the UK to leave earlier if a deal is ratified, clearing the way for opposition parties to back a general election.…

ZAGREB, October 29, 2019 - The Croatian Premier League team Rijeka FC on Monday asked for and was given an official statement from President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović regarding her statement about the club's status in the 1980s in which she said that at the time Rijeka was more of a reserve club for the Serbian Partizan and Crvena Zvezda football clubs, which drew many negative comments. "The purpose of the then political influence on our club's management was to constantly tie Rijeka with Belgrade. The Rijeka that I followed as a supporter in my school days is not the Rijeka we…

ZAGREB, October 29, 2019 - Interior Minister Davor Davor Božinović said on Monday evening that offences such as those committed by senior police officials Josip Ćelić and Darko Car could not be tolerated and that the consequences were clear. "Since the very first day when we assumed responsibility for this system, we said that we would always stand behind police officers and the job they performed in line with the law... These offences cannot be tolerated and the consequences are clear," Božinović said at a news conference he held after it was reported that a deputy police director and two…

ZAGREB, October 28, 2019 - The leader of the opposition MOST party, Božo Petrov, said on Monday that emigration was the biggest challenge faced by Croatia since its accession to the European Union, and criticised the incumbent government for failing to seriously tackle the issue. Petrov accused the government of taking only cosmetic measures in a bid to halt the depopulation trend. "There are no concrete, serious moves to address the challenge of emigration," Petrov told a news conference in Zagreb on Monday. He accused the government of failing to adopt a demographic strategy to alleviate the effects of the…

ZAGREB, October 28, 2019 - Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Deputy Prefect Marko Baras Mandić said on Monday that President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović's statement about the Rijeka Football Club was deeply insulting for the county's residents and that her statement about Goli Otok was dangerous. "I am really shocked as a citizen and deputy prefect because (the president) described the county's residents as proponents of a policy that caused a lot of harm to Croatia in the 1990s while forgetting that at its first official match in Zagreb on October 17 and later at Rijeka's Kantrida stadium on December 22, the Croatian national…

ZAGREB, October 28, 2019 - The two striking unions of primary and secondary school teachers as well as the union of employees in the tertiary education and science sector on Monday walked out of negotiations with the government on higher wages after they did not get an answer about a timetable for talks on their demands. The leader of the secondary school teachers' union, Branimir Mihalinec, said that "the government still does not know" when negotiations on their demand for a higher job complexity index would be arranged. Mihalinec said that their departure from today's talks "is a symbolic, procedural…

ZAGREB, October 28, 2019 - The leader of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BH), Dragan Čović, has confirmed that his party will support Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović in her bid for a second term as President of Croatia. Speaking in an interview with the Sarajevo-based daily Dnevni Avaz of Monday, Čović said that the HDZ BH would support Grabar-Kitarović in the presidential race. "The HDZ BH will join in the election campaign when it formally begins," he said. Citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina who have dual Bosnian and Croatian citizenship are entitled to vote in presidential and parliamentary…