April the 7th, 2022 - When it comes to Croatian state bodies, one could never argue that efficiency is in their arsenal. Slow, outdated practices of taking numbers, standing for hours in lines, needing stamps and being told off by miserable clerks is just the norm for many. It doesn't have to be. The Croatian digital era is finally seeing some progress.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, at a recently held conference in the City of Zagreb, the Central State Office for the Development of a Digital Society presented the current development of the "e-Business" project, which provides unique access to public electronic services for business users across the country.

These services include, among others, e-Authorisation services, issuing certificates that no criminal proceedings are being conducted, the delivery of electronic documents for vehicle registration in Croatia, a single information point - an infrastructure cadastre system and more. A Croatian digital era seemed like an impossible dream just a few years ago, but it seems we're finally catching up.

The e-Business project is being implemented by the aforementioned Central State Office together with the Financial Agency (Fina) and the Agency for Support of Information Systems and Information Technologies (APIS IT), as project partners. The project was co-financed by the European Union (EU) from the European Social Fund and is worth a massive 50,983,989.90 kuna.

The conference was opened by Bernard Grsic, State Secretary of the Central State Office for the Development of a Digital Society.

"As we have an e-Citizens (e-Gradjani) platform, by developing the e-Business platform, we're enabling Croatian companies, small enterprises and family farms (OPGs) to simplify and speed up their communication with public administration bodies. You don't have to go to their offices, to the counters, you don't have to wait in lines, things can now be solved with the click of a mouse,'' pointed out Grsic.

Easier communication with public/state administration bodies

Sasa Bilic, President of the Management Board of APIS IT, also addressed the audience.

"Along with the User Box that will be available to entrepreneurs as both a web and mobile app, the added value of this project is the construction of a modern and sophisticated business reporting system that will be the basis for all business decisions related to public services and their users," said Bilic.

The director of Fina's Digital Solutions Sector, Andreja Kajtaz, was also present.

"By upgrading NIAS and e-Authorisations through the e-Business project, we managed to complete the entire process of interaction between people and businesses with public administration bodies, and the success of the project is best evidenced by the growing number of business users," said Kajtaz.

The main goal of establishing an e-Business system is to positively affect competitiveness by facilitating communication with public administration bodies. The project, which is driving the Croatian digital era forward, directly contributes to the administrative burden faced by business entities through electronic communication with public administration bodies, saves their time and money and increases the availability of services because e-services are available to everyone under equal conditions, regardless of their business location or the device being used.

When the e-Business system is fully implemented, it is expected that over 450 thousand different business users across the nation could use its benefits. This primarily refers to legal entities registered in the Court Register and the registers of numerous associations, foundations and non-profit organisations, as well as enterprises registered in the Trade Register, as well as farmers and family farms registered in the Register of Agricultural Holdings.

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September the 4th, 2021 - One thing which has always fascinated and baffled me, despite many years in Croatia, is the need for tax stamps. You needed to buy them to do just about anything administrative and let's be honest, it's archaic and amusing. Don't tell that to the clerk who is very seriously asking for one, though. Croatian tax stamps are now finally binned and resigned to the history books as the country finally steps out into the 21st century.

Seing your documents get stamped by hand by someone who really couldn't look less interested and then handing over some tax stamps really makes a person feel like they've stepped back in time, and it will come as a pleasant surprise to many when issuing documents that they're no longer needed.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, in the Republic of Croatia, for the issuance of as many as 177 documents, Croatian tax stamps had to be purchased all the way from the dark ages (kidding, but maybe not) until September the 1st, 2021, along with all of the other bizarre paperwork that clerk wanted. They're thankfully no longer required.

As of the 1st of September, Croatian tax stamps have no longer needed to be purchased for the issuance of driving licenses, passports, birth certificates and a whole range of other documents.

Namely, the new Regulation on the Tariff of Administrative Fees entered into force on the 1st of September. The Tax Administration confirmed for RTL that it is expected that 80 million kuna less per year will be paid into the state budget owing to the removal of the need for Croatian tax stamps.

The assistant head of the Zagreb City Administration office, in the civil status sector, said that everything would now be easier for everyone.

"It simply means that it's all going to be easier for people, and for us in some way. So, all documents and certificates from the state registers and the book of citizens such as from the voter list, when we talk about the area of ​​our city office for general administration, are exempt from the payment of administrative fees,'' said Asja Ettinger.

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August the 13th, 2021 - Croatian administration is, for anyone who has had even the remotest of dealings with it, horrendously slow. The country is famous for its draconian rules and masochistic love of stamps and red tape, and needing to get anything done in a rush is outside the realm of normal expectation. Croatian project processing is unfortunately no different, and it represents a major obstacle in withdrawing EU cash.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Jadranka Dozan writes, when it comes to the withdrawal of money from the European Structural and Investment Funds for the previous financial period (2014-2020), Croatia has shifted to a somewhat higher speed. In one year, the country has fortunately grown by almost 20 percent in terms of utilisation, Minister Natasa Tramisak recently emphasized.

However, that means more than two-fifths of the financial envelope, worth about 80 billion kuna or 10.7 billion euros, still remains to be withdrawn. So far, more than 45 billion kuna has been paid out, ie 56 percent (with 47 percent of it having been finally certified).

A kind of fuse for the maximum use of available funds in the given deadline, which is the end of 2023, is the "stock" of contracted projects. About 20 percent more than the available "quota" was agreed upon. In addition to that, the procedures for users, including the rules for public procurement, have been facilitated, and the communication of the competent ministerial department with the European Commission (EC) has been accelerated, they claim.

With the exception of things having been skewed in the sense of the context of the ongoing pandemic, the absorption process is no longer at a snail's pace, says Tramisak. She attributes the difference in terms of utilisation compared to some other EU member states to the fact that this was Croatia's very first programme perspective, while others had been transferring large projects from previous ones, so they were faster in terms of money withdrawal.

In addition, in the first two years of the past period, calls and contracted funds weren't announced at all, and this, as she points out, is difficult for Croatia to compensate for.

However, there is something obvious in the (in)efficiency of Croatia's infamous public administration in the selection procedures for projects set to be co-financed through EU funds. The results of the recently published analysis from Jaksa Puljiz, Sanja Malekovic and Sanja Tisma from the Institute for Development and International Relations are also on this track.

They analysed about thirty calls under the Competitiveness and Cohesion Operational Programme 2014-2020 (OPCK) as the most financially important programme co-financed from the EU budget for Croatia, implemented in the period between 2014 and 2018 and worth about 12.4 billion kuna. It was confirmed that the low efficiency of the system is mostly influenced by Croatian project processing times, ie in terms of dealing with those applications. In Croatia, this implies a significantly longer time than the time prescribed by the Common National Rules, but also than the time of implementation of selection procedures that some previous studies have shown for other EU countries.

Making the first decision on funding in as many as 97 percent of the analysed calls lasted longer than 120 days for Croatia, and most often their duration was from 180 to 360 days. This is likely not a surprise to anyone who has ever tried to do, well, just about anything official here.

“These are extremely long deadlines that have numerous consequences for the absorption and the quality of project implementation. In such a long period of waiting for the beginning of their realisation, it's clear that the circumstances which are very important for successful implementation can change significantly,'' the aforementioned authors point out.

For comparison, they say that similar research once showed that in Germany, neighbouring Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Slovakia, between 31 and 49 percent of respondents using EU funds waited less than three months for their project evaluation results.

The problem of the duration of these Croatian project procedures has recently been highlighted by enterprises who have faced a drastic rise in the prices of certain industrial raw materials and construction materials this year. Some argue the issue to the extent that certain projects co-financed by European Union funds could even come into question.

"It used to happen, for example, that the tender (in terms of deadline) states that the competent authority will notify the applicant of the results of the tender within four months, and 10-12 months will elapse before its conclusion," a consultant for EU projects explains.

When it comes to tenders for businesses (not counting, therefore, public bodies and social groups), the impression, he says, is that they are better off and more consistently organised for farmers than those for enterprises or, for example, those engaged in the fishing industry.

In the Competitiveness and Cohesion Operational Programme, which was the subject of scientific work of the IRMO analysis, the duration of selection procedures is, among other things, a consequence of the large volume of documentation required in most cases from the applicants.

In almost 60 percent of these calls, Croatian applicants quite unsurprisingly had to submit at least 11 different documents, which is quite a high number, according to the authors. Sometimes that figure is even higher, with between 16 and 20 documents needing to be submitted, and in seven percent of cases, even more paperwork than that was required in Croatia.

Nearly 40 percent of applicants stated that their entire application with all of the required attachments had more than 100 pages when complete. Among the more extensive were, for example, public calls related to the energy renovation of buildings, the promotion of sustainable development and the restoration of cultural heritage, as well as the modernisation and construction of student dormitories.

Approximately the same percentage of applications had less than 50 pages in total, which is still a lot.

There is also a large number of frequently asked questions about published invitations, which suggests that the tender documentation needed is often very unclear to applicants. In more than two thirds of the analysed calls, there were more than 100 questions asked. This shows that the Croatian project procedure is not only longer than it should be, but complex and as clear as mud. That also shouldn't come as much of a shock to most.

All this leads to changes and additions to the tender documentation, then the extension of application deadlines, and then the later contracting or later start of Croatian project implementation in relation to the original plans. In less than a quarter (23 percent) of cases, calls didn't undergo any changes, and nearly half (47 percent) underwent two or more changes, only adding to the confusion.

This also indicates that the preparation of tender documentation for competitive tenders for the state administration was a demanding task that often resulted in its amendments and the long duration of Croatian project selection procedures.

The competent ministries and state agencies received a lot of complaints due to the request for documentation that the applicants consider to be entirely necessary.

“Among such examples is the insistence on the original excerpt from the court register instead of the competent clerk simply checking it directly over the Internet. The same is true for the original BON2 certificate from the bank instead of the "downloaded" certificate from internet banking, as well as for the tax certificate confirming the absence of tax debt instead of direct verification,'' said one EU project expert.

Some changes in that direction are already being worked on, thankfully. Minister Tramisak recently said that reforms are being made so that the eFunds system is connected to all of Fina's public services, which will reduce administrative burdens. "People will just need to give their consent for documentation to be accessed online for certain items that they had to supply themselves so far,'' she assured.

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