ZAGREB, 3 May 2022 - An MP of the Green-Left Bloc, Sandra Benčić, said on Tuesday that the Andrej Plenković government has to go, not only because of scandals in which its members were implicated but because of the lack of any results, reforms or vision.
Benčić made the statement ahead of a parliamentary debate to be held this week on an opposition motion to dissolve the parliament to call an election.
The MP said that in the six years of the government's term, the EU funding obtained under the first financial perspective had yielded no effects on key quality of life indicators in the country and that there were still no operational programmes for the absorption of funding from the new, 2021-2027 financial perspective.
Most importantly, there is no progress in reconstruction even two years since the Zagreb earthquake and close to a year and a half since the earthquake in Banija, Benčić said.
The government boasts about having managed to extend the deadline for the absorption of funding from the EU Solidarity Fund but is still not using it, she said.
"We will be late again and have to return the money", she said, adding that due to the lack of progress on any of the important issues in the past six years the government has to step down.
She noted that the appointment of Ivan Paladina as Construction Minister was evidence that PM Plenković did not have the support or the team in his HDZ party to check and propose scandal-free ministerial candidates.
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