February the 18th, 2022 - Prominent Croatian businessman and company owner Branko Roglic has been named the first president of the Bulgarian-Croatian Business Club which has been founded in the City of Zagreb.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the Bulgarian-Croatian Business Club was founded in Zagreb and includes Bulgarian companies which can be found operating here on the Croatian market and Croatian business circles cooperating with and within Bulgaria in order to expand and deepen mutual their contacts and encourage further investment activities.

The well known founder and owner of the Orbico Group, Branko Roglic, was elected president of the new club, and Martin Kasabov, the executive director of Meblo Trade, was elected vice president, as the Embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria reported.

The founding assembly was attended by representatives of the largest companies operating on both Bulgarian and Croatian markets, such as Branko Roglic's Orbico Group itself, Podravka, Fortenova (formerly Agrokor), Meblo Trade, Rubicon Engineering AD, Elmark Group and more.

One of the first initiatives of the newly founded club will be the organisation of a Business Forum with representatives of the Regional Chamber of Commerce - Sofia in Zagreb this summer. As was pointed out, the Bulgarian-Croatian Business Club is expected to actively participate in holding various other regional business gatherings, such as hosting business delegation from Plovdiv in the Dalmatian city of Zadar, from Gabrovo in Sisak and from Vidin in Vukovar.

Congratulations on the formation of the Bulgarian-Croatian Business Club were sent by the Bulgarian Minister of Economy and Industry Kornelia Ninova, and the participants in the founding assembly were greeted by the Bulgarian Ambassador to Croatia, Genka Georgieva.

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ZAGREB, 15 Feb 2022 - The Bulgarian-Croatian Business Club, including Bulgarian companies operating in Croatia and Croatian business circles that cooperate with Bulgaria on enhancing partnership and stimulating investment, was established in Zagreb on Tuesday.

Orbico Group founder and owner Branko Roglić was elected the club's president, while Meblo Trade executive director Martin Kasabov was elected his deputy, the Bulgarian Embassy said in a statement.

Attending the club's founding session were representatives of the biggest companies active on the Bulgarian and Croatian markets such as Orbico Group, Podravka, Fortenova, Meblo Trade, Rubicon Engineering AD and ELMARK GROUP.

This summer the club will organise a business forum in Zagreb in cooperation with representatives of the Regional Chamber of Commerce Sofia, and it will also actively participate in organising other regional business meetings.

ZAGREB, 20 May (Hina) - Croatia's Ambassador to Bulgaria, Jasna Ognjanovac, was summoned by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday over President Zoran Milanović's statement in which he strongly criticized "Bulgaria's policy towards the European integration of North Macedonia," Bulgarian media reported. 

Ognjanovac was summoned at the request of Minister Svetlan Stoev, and she was received by the Director General for European Affairs, Rumen Alexandrov.

The reason for the meeting was President Zoran Milanović's statement after a summit of the Brdo-Brijuni Process at Brdo Pri Kranju, in which he sharply criticized Bulgaria's policy towards the European integration of North Macedonia, the Bulgarian BNT broadcaster said.

Alexandrov called Milanović's statement "unacceptable and unwarranted".

He said that it was "disappointing not just in the context of the excellent bilateral dialogue between Sofia and Zagreb and their unanimity on a number of topics on the European and regional agenda, but also in view of the fact that being the region's immediate neighbors, Bulgaria and Croatia are naturally bonded by a shared interest in the reform, stabilization and EU integration of the Western Balkans in the near future."

In a statement to reporters at Brdo Pri Kranju, Milanović warned that North Macedonia "is in an impossible position" and that one EU member state demanded that North Macedonia "define its national genesis in the way requested by the neighboring state" in history textbooks.

He said that he would "openly oppose" that within his powers.

Milanović did not name the state but meant Bulgaria, which is rejecting a negotiating framework for North Macedonia because Sofia claims, North Macedonian textbooks "revise and negate their common ethnic and linguistic history."

The Croatian ambassador said she would convey the Bulgarian position to Zagreb, noting the need for cooperation between Bulgaria and Croatia with a view to guaranteeing the stability of the Western Balkans and the region's European perspective, BNT said. 

The Croatian Foreign and European Affairs Ministry confirmed to Hina that Ambassador Ognjenovac had been to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry where the Bulgarian side conveyed to her its position.

For more about politics in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

The problem of emigration in Croatia has been further underlined by weak economic indicators, after Bulgaria, Croatia is the most underdeveloped country in the EU, explains economist Zdeslav Šantić.

As Tomislav Pili/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 14th of April, 2019, bringing Croatian average salaries closer to the average salaries of Western Europe, and strengthening institutions, are major factors which could significantly reduce the outflow of people from Croatia to work overseas, according to a study by the Brussels think tank, Centre for Economic and Political Studies (CEPS), which was published last week.

In a piece of research entitled "Mobile Workers of the European Union: A Challenge for Public Finance?" authors Cinzia Alcidi and Daniel Gros discuss current trends in labour mobility within the European Union, and the challenges faced by the countries from which such a workforce leaves.

The research suggests that in the last ten years, the mobility of workers has increased considerably in the EU. While in 2007 only 2.5 percent of workers had left their home countries, in 2017, the share of the mobile working population of the European Union grew to 3.8 percent. Increasing the mobility of European workers is the result of two factors, states CEPS. The first is the enlargement of the EU to the east having occurred in two waves, and mobility has increased much more, especially after the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the EU back in 2007. Apart from the east-west direction, recent years have seen more labour force mobility from the southern EU member states to the north, due to debt crisis and unemployment growth.

The latest data referenced by CEPS shows that Romania, Lithuania and Croatia have the highest share of workforce abroad, far above the European average. Nearly 20 percent of Romanian citizens earn their money in other EU member states, in Lithuania it is 14.8 percent, and in Croatia, 13.9 percent. For Croatian economists, such data doesn't really come as a surprise.

"Increasing emigration over the last few years was expected, and the experience of other new EU member states has shown that after EU accession and the labour market opening, emigration strongly increased, and in Croatia, the problem of emigration is further underlined by weak [domestic] economic indicators.

Croatia had one of the longest recessions in Europe, lasting six years in total. At the same time, even after recovery began, the growth dynamics remained insufficient in bringing Croatia closer to the EU's economic growth. Today, Croatia, after Bulgaria, is the least developed country,'' says OTP banka's economist Zdeslav Šantić.

"The accelerated outflow of the working-age population is particularly evident with the opening up of [Croatia's access to] the single European market since 2013, which was further strengthened by the deep recession in Croatia. However, with the exit from the migrant crisis, emigration from Croatia, especially among the working-age population, has not diminished but accelerated. Migration motives can be different - from differences in incomes, to employment opportunities, to structural factors,'' emphasised Zrinka Živković Matijević, an analyst from RBA.

"The very last factors - a weak institutional environment and (unfavourable) expectations of future economic prosperity (quality of education, satisfaction and trust in politics, future opportunities for generations to come) - are the most common motives for migration of citizens of a particular state who have a higher level of education. In that context, it isn't surprising that the countries which the most emigration are those with the lowest social progress index.

Regarding the convergence of wages, the fact is that at the very beginning of the transition process, Croatia had a high exchange rate, ie, a higher level of wage adjustment with the EU compared to other new members, following only Slovenia, the RBA analyst said.

"Meanwhile, the pace of wage growth and the standard of measured purchasing power parity in other countries has increased considerably since 2004, while GDP measured by the purchasing power parity in relation to the EU 28 average remains at approximately the same level (around 60 percent of the EU average), stagnant or comparatively behind,'' explained Živković Matijević.

Unfortunately, in Croatia, the problem of emigration is not a consequence of current economic trends, Šantić added, saying that the high perception of corruption and nepotism, inefficient state institutions, the huge importance the state carries in overall economic trends and the lack of transparency in the public sector further encourage young people to leave.

"When talking about the emigration of young people, it's worth mentioning that there's a lack of a housing care strategy. There's no regulated rental market yet, but young people have only the option of buying property through multi-year borrowing, and government measures are aimed solely at boosting property purchases,''

An interesting detail in the CEPS survey is the share of faculty-educated mobile workers. Although the usual theory often claims that those who find it the "easiest to leave'' are the highly educated, research shows that this is not the case, especially in the case of new EU members such as Croatia.

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Click here for the original article by Tomislav Pili for Poslovni Dnevnik

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