July 19, 2022 - The 4^th International poetry festival Split na dlanu ("Split in your palm") was held in Split on July 16.

That is an event where poets from all over Croatia, neighboring countries, and Europe participate. All the selected poems for this festival are published in the Croatian language. Poets from Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Germany, Montenegro, Luxembourg, and North Macedonia are represented in the festival collection this year.

The organizer was Zdravko Odorčić, playwright, writer and poet from Zagreb, who is also the president of the KULTura sNOVA association. The organization in Split was largely taken over by Slavica Oka Pažanin, who is also a poet and member of the KULTura sNOVA. 

In the first part of the poetry festival, the following poets were presented: Sanja Fistonić from Jelsa on the island of Hvar, Ankica Anchie from Split and Nihad Mašić River from Tuzla (Bosnia and Herezegovina). In the second part, the poets from the collection "Split na dlanu" presented themselves. The opening speech was given by Zdravko Odorčić, the program was led by Slavica Oka Pažanin while the whole event included musical performances by Diana Hilje, singer-songwriter Boris Krivec and Jerko Marević.

As a surprise of the evening, the female klapa Marjanka performed. Mat zemlja by the poet Sanja Fistonić from Jelsa (island of Hvar) was declared the best song of the festival. It was a wonderful evening full of lyrics, music and joy. 

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

July 19, 2022 - The latest flight news to Croatia as British Airways Zagreb flights see further reductions in September and October this year. 

After reducing its August schedule, British Airways has revised its flight schedule for September and October, announcing that further changes are possible, reports Croatian Aviation. 

It was recently announced that the British Airways route between London (Heathrow) and Zagreb had been reduced for August, but the airline has now reduced the number of planned flights for September and October as well. 

On July 17, the airline changed its flight schedule for July and August on several European routes. Namely, until September 11, the rule of Heathrow Airport is in force, which limits the number of passengers at this airport daily due to the lack of workforce. 

Many flights on the line between London (Heathrow) and Dubrovnik have been announced for September. However, instead of 20, the carrier will operate 22 return flights on this route, which is why flights between Heathrow and Zagreb have been reduced. Namely, that line was initially planned with 39 return flights in September, but now it has been reduced to 36, which is an almost negligible number.

However, in October, British Airways is significantly cutting operations on the route to Zagreb again. Until July 17, the carrier had planned 52 monthly flights to the Croatian capital, but the flight schedule was reduced again. Namely, 52 flights were initially planned for October, but 12 were canceled, so now 40 flights are available for booking in October.

It is likely that by September, the airline will further reduce the number of monthly flights for October, not only to Croatia but at the European level, so additional cancellations are undoubtedly possible. However, unlike Zagreb, given that we are in the peak summer season, the flight schedule to the airports on the coast (Pula, Split, and Dubrovnik) has no significant cancellations, except for Split, where several last-minute cancellations were recorded.

For more on flights to Croatia and other travel announcements, make sure to check out our dedicated travel section.

July the 19th, 2022 - There is a generally lower Croatian poverty risk, but despite that, around 70% of the population is still only just managing to make ends meet.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, last year, every fifth person in the Republic of Croatia was at risk of poverty and social exclusion, or 20.9 percent of them, according to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). This is a small improvement compared to back in 2019 and 2020.

The decline in terms of Croatian poverty risk is weak, especially when you take into account that the economic growth in 2021, as Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic often points out, stood at a record 10.4 percent. The fact that the number of those at risk of poverty didn't really increase significantly back in 2020, a year when the country's GDP fell by around eight percent, can still be attributed to the government's rapidly introduced social measures.

Data from the CBS also shows that the Croatian poverty risk rate back in 2021 stood at 19.2 percent, which is almost one percentage point (0.9) more than in pandemic-dominated 2020. The poverty risk threshold in 2021 for a single-member household was 36,461 kuna per year, or slightly more than 3000 kuna per month. For a household with two adults and two children under the age of fourteen, it stood at 76,568 kuna per year, or 6,300 kuna per month.

If various social benefits were also excluded from overall income, the picture of those exposed to the Croatian poverty risk would be much worse. In such a case, the same 19.2 percent would even go up to 24.2 percent. Most people are at risk of poverty live in Pannonian Croatia - as much as 28.6 percent of them, followed by Adriatic Croatia (19.9 percent) and then in Northern Croatia (19.8 percent). The least number of people are at risk of poverty live in the City of Zagreb. The greatest risk group in all of Croatia last year was, as expected, elderly people aged 65 and over, among whom the risk of poverty rate is as high as 32.4 percent, with women at that age being at a much higher risk than men. For older men, this rate stood at 25.9 percent, and for women - 37 percent. Persons aged 25 to 54 are the least exposed to the Croatian poverty risk.

As expected, the unemployed live at the greatest risk of poverty, but it's also interesting to note that those who do work/are employed can also be exposed to the same Croatian poverty risk. Statistics show that four percent of employed people are still at risk of dealing with poverty. Living at risk of poverty certainly affects a person's overall quality of life. Thus, as many as 43 percent of such people are just managing to make ends meet, and with difficulties. It's very difficult for almost eight percent of people in that group to make ends meet, with almost 20 percent of them claiming that to be the case.

The Croatian poverty risk also brings with it many other adversities. Almost half of people (46.5 percent) whose income is 60 percent of the average income cannot meet any unexpected financial expenses, 16 percent are late in settling their financial obligations, and almost six percent (5.7) of them cannot afford adequate heating in the coldest of the winter months.

It's worth noting that back at the end of last year, the Croatian Government adopted the National Plan for the fight against poverty and social exclusion for the period from 2021 to 2027. In it, it set out some priorities and measures aimed at reducing poverty and social exclusion in Croatia.

The government's plan is to reduce the poverty risk rate down to 15 percent by the year 2027, and the percentage of those living at risk of poverty and social exclusion to 17.8 percent.

It will be implemented on the basis of the Action Plan, and includes measures such as increasing the adequacy of social benefits and increasing the coverage of supplementary health insurance for the most vulnerable groups in society.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated politics section.

July the 19th, 2022 - The state is set to ensure a massive 102 million kuna payout to Croatian local self-government units across the country in order to raise the overall quality of life of their residents.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, the state will help improve the quality of life in cities and municipalities with a total payment of 102 million kuna to various Croatian local self-government units, which is the total value of approved projects for co-financing at the public tender of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Construction and State Property.

This amount will be divided into a total of 353 projects submitted by cities and municipalities from all counties, with the exception of the City of Zagreb. The projects themselves have a total value of 366 million kuna, and the state, depending on the level of development, will cover from 20,000 kuna to 120,000 kuna. The projects were chosen by the Croatian local self-government units themselves, so it is interesting to see what was considered a priority in this situation.

More than 100 projects involve the reconstruction and improvement of the roads, and about 50 projects pertain to the improvement of pavements and footpaths, as well as the procurement of communal equipment and machinery, from lawn mowers to snow plows and farm machines such as tractors. The arrangement of public lighting, most often replacing the classic bulbs with LED lighting, was requested by about forty Croatian local self-government units, and more than 20 of them see the arrangement of carparks and cemeteries as paramount. Community homes, playgrounds and kindergartens will also be arranged with the help of the state in ten cities and municipalities across the nation.

The lowest amount, 20,000 kuna, will go to Blato on the island of Korcula for setting up some new bus stops, and with the highest amounts of support, some will be able to arrange their central squares, such as the municipalities of Martijanec (near Varazdin) and Ribnik in Karlovac County, while Orebic and Komiza down on the coast will also repair their own squares.

Janjina down in Dubrovnik-Neretva County will be helped with the improvement of their local waterfront, and Sucuraj will see the improvement of their beach fully co-financed as part of the move. Djurdjevac will arrange their town's market with this government support, and the only project in an entrepreneurial zone is found in the municipality of Velika in Pozega-Slavonia County, where the road and pedestrian path will both be arranged. The richest of all, Istria County, has the fewest projects to speak of, only three of them in total, and they relate to smaller projects on cemetery walls, landscaping and public lighting.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated politics section.

July the 19th, 2022 - Is the idea of a much talked about Croatian fast train network just a pipe dream that will continue to swallow money and lead to next to nothing in the end?

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, it is practically impossible to avoid running into crowds and chaos in passenger traffic during the summer season, especially this one which has been almost entirely created as a result of the increased demand for services which had been previously devastated by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Not only that, more than ever, the focus of decision-makers has fallen on trains and railways, a form of travel that is both cheaper and more sustainable than airplanes, and could fulfill the growing needs of Europe's increasing need for mobility for either work or for holidays and tourism.

Passenger demand has also increased, which we can also see happening here in Croatia, and this country, as expected, the facilities are far from ready to meet the needs of the market - photos of exhausted passengers at stations are a daily occurrence in the media. At the same time, Croatia is also late for one important proverbial train. The vision for Europe's high-speed rail network was outlined in France back at the end of June by rail industry leaders, with the ambitious goal of doubling high-speed rail use by the year 2030 and tripling current levels by 2050.

This is only possible with the massive and accelerated expansion of the high-speed railway network, with a significantly greater focus on traffic between countries, which will be the biggest obstacle, according to experts who have been discussing it more and more intensively over more recent days in the world's leading media.

The good news is that Europe already has thousands of kilometres of dedicated high-speed rail, but it is mainly focused on its respective domestic markets, although there are also cross-border success stories such as Paris-Lyon, Milan-Rome, Barcelona-Madrid and the Berlin-Munich lines. What's the situation here in Croatia, though? This country has ongoing issues with trains, from very serious financial ones to situations in which drivers don't turn up for work, or dispatchers fall asleep on the job. With all of this firmly in mind, is the idea of a Croatian fast train network nothing more than a dream?

Why don't we have more trains? Building lines across international borders, even within the European Union (EU), brings with it some numerous challenges – who pays for what, how contracts are awarded and to whom, how might we resolve conflicting national standards and regulations... Moreover, even where international high-speed lines have been built, often at an absolutely enormous cost, national loyalties, suffocating bureaucracy and high fees are obstacles to using the full potential of these existing lines.

It is good, however, that the awareness for such a project within the European Union is now very high, and thus the will appears to be there. If the bloc wants to continue developing tourism and strengthen itself as the business center of Europe, Croatia and the idea of a Croatian fast train network will have to get on that train before it leaves the station. Whether or not that will ever happen with Croatia's love of a snail's pace and red tape, remains to be seen.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

July the 19th, 2022 - Croatian euro coin production has officially kicked off as the country's accession to the Eurozone rapidly approaches, marked out on the calendar to take place on the 1st of January, 2023.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, on Monday the 18th of July, 2022, Croatian euro coin production finally began at the Croatian Mint in Sveta Nedelja near the City of Zagreb, and Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic (HDZ) and Governor of the Croatian National Bank (CNB) Boris Vujcic both attended the ceremony marking the start of production as Croatia's entry into the Eurozone draws ever closer and the final loose ends are tied up.

The whole Croatian euro coin production process looks really impressive, six presses are currently working in the Croatian Mint in Sveta Nedelja, where they can produce between five and eight hundred coins per minute. The daily capacity of the factory itself is a massive four million coins, and about seventy employees are working on the rollout of these brand new coins in time for the official change over the the bloc's single currency next year in three shifts, as reported by HRT.

It is interesting to note that the plates for the coins themselves are procured in other European countries, through various tenders, and the tool intended for the Croatian euro coin production was produced right here in the Republic of Croatia.

As we approach the beginning of Croatia's membership of the Eurozone and the Croatian national currency (kuna) spends its final few months in circulation as legal tender, people will be able to purchase the new Croatian euro coins themselves as of December the 1st, 2022, while the Croatian National Bank (CNB) will be supplying the country's banks beginning in October.

For more on the countdown to Croatian Eurozone membership and other politics stories, make sure to check out our dedicated politics section.

ZAGREB, 18 July 2022 - The Vukovar 1991 association of lawyers on Monday called on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to fulfill his promise and make it possible for the association and former Croatian camp inmates to make the agreed visit to the former Stajićevo prisoner of war camp.

In a press release, the association recalls that six years ago, on 16 July 2016, through the mediation of German lawmaker Josip Juratović and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the then Prime Minister of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić received an official delegation of the lawyers' association Vukovar 1991, which consisted of Zoran Šangut and Pero Kovačević.

At the meeting, they discussed the non-prosecution of war crimes committed in camps in Serbia (Stajićevo, Begejci, Sremska Mitrovica, Niš and Belgrade) against Croatian inmates, and a visit to Stajićevo, the installation of a memorial plaque at the site of the former camp, lighting candles and laying wreaths.

Vučić promised us at the meeting that he would allow a visit to the site of the former Stajićevo camp, the installation of a memorial plaque, lighting candles and laying wreaths in October 2016, the association's deputy head, Pero Kovačević, said in the press release.

He pointed out he had agreed all the details of the official protocol for that visit with Vučić's advisor Veran Matić, but that Vučić had cancelled it when the date of the visit was decided.

Kovačević said that with today's letter, they remind Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić of the unfulfilled promise, calling on him to allow an official visit to Stajićevo, the installation of a memorial plaque, laying wreaths and lighting candles in commemoration of the killed Croatian camp inmates in that and other camps in Serbia.

For more, check out our politics section.

ZAGREB, 18 July 2022 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Monday that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić's visit to Croatia cannot be private because of political implications and that it will come about when the time is right.

Vučić has expressed a wish to visit the Jasenovac memorial centre privately, but has been denied clearance from the Croatian authorities to visit the site of the WWII concentration camp.

"We have learned unofficially that he wishes to pay a visit on Sunday, but without a formal announcement that should precede any visit, especially of this nature. No matter how discreet he may want it to be, it's not a private visit. It's a matter that has its political implications," Plenković told reporters after a meeting of the leadership of his HDZ party.

"We have said that it is not the right moment, nor is the methodology right. When the time comes and the conditions have been met, we can talk about it," he added.

He described the reaction from Belgrade, not just from the government but the media as well, as "hysterical," adding that Croatia is "inclusive and tolerant" and is not trying to score political points on this issue.

"The visit will come about when the time comes. A policy of fait accompli is unacceptable anywhere, including Croatia. At this point we concluded that this visit does not suit us," the Croatian prime minister said.

Earlier on Monday, Vučić said he had tried but failed to arrange with Zagreb a visit to Jasenovac three times, once in 2021 and twice in 2022. He said he was rejected because of the "internal political situation" in Croatia, with the explanation that his visit was not welcome.

"I know of his initiative from late February, March. We said that the time was not right for such a visit. After that there have been no contacts or discussions on this subject," Plenković said.

He added that at the end of February Construction Minister Darko Horvat was arrested on corruption charges, his father died, and the USKOK anti-corruption office were interested in Deputy PM Boris Milošević and Labour and Pension System Minister Josip Aladrović.

"We sent a message that it was not a good time for such a visit. As for September 2021, I tried to check it with my aides and we do not remember that. We will check it again," Plenković said.

He said that any visit that might have political consequences should be carefully arranged.

"It is important that we treat each other with respect and show that we are states. States communicate like people," Plenković said, adding that anyone wishing to visit someone should announce their visit.

He said that the matter would be discussed later on "when passions have cooled" and "constructive communication is established."

For more, check out our politics section.