ZAGREB, 18 Feb 2022 - Croatian parliamentarians on Thursday supported amendments to a law on the establishment of infrastructure for alternative fuels, underlining the importance of building as many charging stations for alternative fuels as possible.

A state secretary at the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure Ministry, Josip Bilaver, said that the amendments were aimed at developing infrastructure for alternative fuels (electricity, hydrogen, biofuels, natural gas) as a precondition for their use in transport.

This would help develop a sustainable market and transport system based on alternative fuels as well as their minimum impact on the environment and society, he said.

He noted that the bill ensured alignment with EU regulations and created preconditions for a better provision of services for users of alternative fuels by establishing a register of charging stations for alternative fuels.

1,300 new charging stations in next 2-3 years

Noting that the ministry was not satisfied with the number of charging stations for alternative fuels and their capacity, Bilaver said that under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, in the next two to three years 1,300 new charging stations would be built, of which 200 would be fast and 1,100 standard.

Anka Mrak Taritaš (Centre/GLAS) said that Croatia was dealing with the topic of alternative fuels not because it wanted to but because it had to, as it was an EU topic.

She noted that public transport was the biggest source of pollution in road, rail and other transport.

The key question, therefore, is what kind of fuels public transport vehicles will use, she said, wondering what Croatia would subsidize and what it would invest in.

The MP said that in 2021 more than 50% of vehicles sold on the European market were electric vehicles and that they would arrive in Croatia as a tourist country. Important for visitors will be what kind of charging stations we have and how fast they are. "We have to take that into account as well," she said.

SDP MP Mirela Ahmetović said that Croatia is aligning with a 2014 EU directive and its amended version from 2019, while the EC has published a proposal for a new regulation for infrastructure for alternative fuels, which should go into force already this year to encourage a faster transition to mobility with low or zero emissions, with appropriate infrastructure for vehicles powered by alternative fuels.

And we are introducing a directive that we will soon have to repeal, she warned.

Željko Pavić of the Social Democrats believes it is important that as a tourist destination Croatia legally defines the development of infrastructure for hydrogen charging stations also for vessels due to boaters who, he said, will definitely start using hydrogen as a fuel for their vessels. This is also important for people living on islands and shipping companies that will seek an alternative for oil products, he said.

Miro Totgergeli of the HDZ group said that over the past five years a large number of charging stations for electric vehicles had been built but apart from liquefied petroleum gas, the use of other alternative fuels for transport was rather limited in Croatia. The market for vehicles that do not use oil products is also very small, he said.

Noting that the EU would reduce energy consumption by 36% by 2030 to achieve the target of carbon neutrality by 2050, Vesna Vučemilović of the Croatian Sovereignists said that the volume of transport in the EU was constantly growing, which would have an effect on climate change, the quality of air, and infrastructure.

She also warned that a biodiesel factory in Vukovar was closed down in 2016 because there was no market for it.

For more, check out our politics section.

ZAGREB, 11 Feb 2022 - The Croatian parliament on Friday adopted a package of judicial laws as well as a report on the effects of epidemiological measures against coronavirus from 1 September to the end of December 2021.

The package of judicial laws includes amendments to the Courts Act, the State Attorney's Office Act, and the law governing the territorial jurisdictions and seats of courts and state attorney's offices. It specifies the election procedure for the Supreme Court President and Attorney General and introduces mandatory background checks for all judges and state attorneys every five years.

Court presidents and state attorneys will be required to apply for security checks with the competent security and intelligence agency through the Ministry of Justice.

In reference to the election of the Supreme Court President, the State Judicial Council (DSV) will submit timely and complete applications to the President of the Republic, and not his chief of staff, who will then request an opinion on the candidates from the competent authorities, a general assembly of the Supreme Court and the competent parliamentary committee.

If the President of the Republic does not recommend any of the candidates within 30 days, the DSV will revoke the public call for applications and advertise a new call within eight days.

In the case of expiry of the Supreme Court President's tern, the DSV will have the authority to appoint an acting president until a new president is elected. Under the present law, in this case, the duties of the Supreme Court President are carried out by the Vice President.

The State Attorney's Council (DOV) will submit applications for the position of Attorney General to the government which will then request an opinion on the candidates from the competent authorities and if the government does not recommend any of the candidates within 30 days, the DOV will revoke the public call for applications and advertise a new call within eight days.

For more, check out our politics section.

ZAGREB, 11 Feb 2022 - Parliament on Friday asked the government to verify the number and authenticity of the signatures collected for the Bridge party's referendum petitions to abolish COVID certificates and the crisis management team, and to include at least two representatives of each petition in the process.

The government was also asked to check if all the signatures were collected in line with the Referendum Act.

Parliament passed the relevant conclusions, proposed by the Committee on the Constitution, with 77 votes, while 32 MPs were against and 13 abstained.

Before the vote, parliament rejected amendments by Bridge and the Social Democratic Party to ask the State Electoral Commission, rather than the government, to verify the signatures in 30 days and the SDP proposal to establish a parliamentary task force, comprising three members from the opposition and four from the majority, to supervise the count.

Speaker Gordan Jandroković said recently he could not say how much the verification would take and that once the signatures had been counted, the process was back in parliament's hands.

If it is established that Bridge collected enough signatures, parliament can either call a referendum or ask the Constitutional Court to assess the referendum questions.

Bridge delivered the signatures to parliament on 24 January, saying they had collected 410,533 for the petition against COVID certificates and 409,219 against the national COVID crisis management team, more than the 368,867 required (10% of eligible voters) for a referendum to be called.

Bridge calls out majority for not allowing State Electoral Commission to count votes

Before today's vote, MP Marin Miletić of Bridge called out the ruling majority for not allowing the State Electoral Commission to count votes because "everyone would be sure in that case."

He appealed to the majority's conscience during the vote, telling them not to be afraid of citizens and to allow the referendum.

For more, check out our politics section.

ZAGREB, 11 Feb 2022 - Željko Sačić of the Croatian Sovereignists party (HS) said on Friday the State Attorney General and the justice minister should demand an explanation of the decision of the Osijek County State Attorney's Office to scrap a criminal report against the murderers of a small girl in Borovo Selo in 1992.

The county office has dismissed the criminal report filed by an association of war veterans against the perpetrators of the March 1992 war crime in Borovo Selo where four-year-old Martina Štefančić and her grandmother were killed and her uncle was seriously wounded when there were no war operations there.

Sačić told the parliament that the explanation sent to the association read that of the seven perpetrators, some were amnestied and five were outside Croatia, and that the testimonies of the witnesses, who were 12 and 14 when the crime happened, could not be treated as credible.

Therefore, the HS party insists that State Attorney General Zlata Hrvoj Šipek and minister Ivan Malenica must demand an explanation in greater detail.

He said that this party would request convening the parliamentary committees on war veterans and on national security to discuss this matter.

Željko Štefančić, whose niece and mother were the victims killed during the occupation of the village, told Vukovar County Court in 2004 while testifying at a war crimes trial of eight former Serb paramilitaries, that one evening somebody had opened fire at his house and that he had been wounded. The witness did not see who or how many people entered his house. His mother and niece were taken to another room, where they were killed, according to his testimony.

For more, check out our politics section.

ZAGREB, 9 Feb 2022 - The problem of systematic radioactive waste management in Croatia will be resolved with the construction of a radioactive waste management facility, Žarko Katić, state secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, said in parliament on Wednesday.

Speaking during a discussion on the proposal to amend the Radiological and Nuclear Safety Act, Katić said that only low and medium radioactive waste from the medicine and science industry, as well as from the Krško nuclear power plant, would be disposed of in the future facility, and not highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.

As for the low and medium radioactive waste from Krško, it is mostly disposable material worn by workers and discarded at the end of the day, he added.

Katić said that industrial and medical radioactive waste was currently disposed of in two storage facilities in Zagreb - the Ruđer Bošković Institute and the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health. It currently amounts to 11.5 cubic metres and is expected to reach about 100 cubic metres by 2060.

With the waste from Krško, this amount will be an additional 1,130 cubic metres, and by the time Krško closes in 2043, it is estimated that it will have reached 1,780 cubic metres, Katić said.

MPs did not have any major objections to the proposal and, in light of the current energy crisis, a portion of them supported the use nuclear energy as clean energy.

"Nuclear energy is needed. It is clean and our future lies in nuclear energy," said Marin Miletić of the Bridge party. Darko Klasić of the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS) agreed, saying that nuclear energy is "a clean, safe, competitive and low-carbon source of energy."

"The world has said yes to nuclear power plants. We need to have them because with growing consumption they are the only good, albeit not perfect, solution for now," said the Homeland Movement's Davor Dretar.

"I am sure that people in Dalmatia would not support the construction of a nuclear power station," said Social Democrat Renata Sabljar Dračevac, stressing that the use of nuclear energy in Croatia requires a national consensus.

Anka Mrak Taritaš (Civil and Liberal Alliance) also said that Croatia should declare its political view on nuclear energy.

Katić said there were three reasons why the present law needed amending - to align it with the law on the Fund for financing the decommissioning and disposal of radioactive waste and with EU directives, and to improve the system overall. He announced that a nuclear emergency response plan would be adopted soon.

For more, check out our dedicated politics section.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - Opposition female members of the Croatian parliament gathered as part of an informal initiative to increase support for victims of sexual violence on Thursday called on all courts in the country to give priority to cases of physical and sexual violence against women and children.

Dalija Orešković of the Centre party warned of the slowness and inefficiency of the judiciary in protecting children's rights, saying that a country is governed by the rule of law in so far as it provides legal protection to those who need it.

"We have received a large number of complaints about the work of the judiciary in cases of domestic violence, which are often not adequately recognized in divorce and other situations," Orešković said. She warned that the judiciary was too slow in such situations where "every day can be fatal or critical for someone."

Orešković called on all judicial workers not to wait for any major judicial reform but to show greater sensibility for such cases and give them a priority.

For more, check out our politics section.

ZAGREB, 3 Feb 2022 - Ahead of a parliamentary debate on a government report on the effects of epidemiological measures taken to fight coronavirus between 1 September and the end of December 2021, the issue of COVID certificates divided the parliamentary majority and opposition deputies.

Opposition deputies stressed that the introduction of those certificates was the worst decision in the two years of the pandemic and that they should be abolished while the ruling HDZ insisted the certificates had to be kept.

Abolishing the certificates would leave us within our borders, and we want to be European citizens and travel, said HDZ MP Maja Grba Bujević.

Let us abolish the certificates, a discriminatory measure that we cannot afford anyway, and that has proven ineffective and costs the economy too much. Money for testing could be used in a much better way, said Bridge MP Marija Selak Raspudić.

Marijan Pavliček of the Croatian Sovereignists said that a number of contradictory and futile decisions had been made in the past two years, with the one on the introduction of certificates being the worst.

Pavliček as well as Stephen Nikola Bartulica (Homeland Movement) criticized plans to test school children.

"By introducing testing you are putting pressure on children and parents, the more so as children get infected less and have milder symptoms," Pavliček said.

SDP: We need clear leadership, clear measures

Social Democratic Party (SDP) MP Peđa Grbin expressed hope the Omicron variant was the light at the end of the tunnel.

Now that we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we need clear leadership and clear measures so that we do not make a mistake on the path on which we have often wondered, he said.

Ivana Kekin of the Green-Left Bloc said that since the end of October Croatia had lost more than 5,000 people to COVID, describing that as tragic.

We are ninth in the world in terms of the number of COVID fatalities, we have the highest death rate when it comes to deaths caused by the Omicron variant, in January we lost 1,800 people and 80% of them were not vaccinated, she said, wondering who would assume responsibility - the COVID-19 response team, the health minister or the prime minister.

Answering to opposition criticisms, HDZ MP Grba Bujević said wise and well-thought-out measures were taken.

One should not just look at the figures but at a number of other elements as well. The government and the state invested a lot of effort to procure the vaccine, which is free, the health system did not collapse even though some said it would, and free testing is available, she said.

For more, check out our politics section.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia, make sure to bookmark our dedicated section and select your preferred language if it isn't English.

ZAGREB, 30 Jan 2022 - The Croatian Parliament's Committee on the Constitution and Rules of Procedure have decided on the distribution of HRK 54.9 million (€7.32m) for the work of political parties and independent members of Parliament, as provided for in this year's budget.

The money will be divided according to election results, and the parties will receive HRK 352,351 per male MP and 387,587 per female MP due to their underrepresentation.

The largest amount of HRK 22.4 million will be distributed to the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which has 45 male and 16 female lawmakers in the present 151-seat parliament. 

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) has 19 male and 15 female MPs and will receive HRK 12.5 million, while the Homeland Movement (DP) will get HRK 3.9 million for eight male and three female MPs. This is despite the fact that 18 lawmakers who were expelled from the SDP have since formed the Social Democrats group, while the DP has been left without their founder, Miroslav Škoro.

Bridge, with seven male MPs and one female, will receive HRK 2.8 million. HRK 1.8 million will go to the We Can! platform (3 male and 2 female MPs), HRK 1.1 million to the Independent Democratic Serb Party (1 male and 2 female MPs), and HRK 1.09 million to the Istrian Democratic Party (2 male and 1 female MPs).

The Croatian Social Liberal Party, Croatian Peasant Party and Croatian Conservative Party have two MPs each and will receive HRK 704,000 per party.

The New Left, the Workers Front, the Civic and Liberal Alliance (GLAS), the Party with a First and Last Name, Centre, and the Reformists each have one female MP and will each receive HRK 387,587. The same amount will also go to independent Ermina Lekaj Prljaskaj.

The HRK 54.9 million will be paid out quarterly in equal amounts into the bank accounts of the political parties and independent MPs.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)

For more on politics in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated politics section.

ZAGREB, 26 Jan 2022 - MPs, both of the ruling majority and of the opposition, on Wednesday supported the final bill on regular and occasional coastal maritime transport, underscoring the importance of transport links between islands and the mainland for improving living conditions and economic development.

Presenting the draft bill in the parliament, the State Secretary at the Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure, Josip Bilaver, said that the aim of the law was to permanently connect islands with the mainland, and inhabited islands with one another, as well as to increase the existing and introduce new routes for better mobility, faster transport, balanced development of counties and better living conditions on islands.

He said that the new law, among other things, regulated the issue of privilege and free transport and provided free transport for firefighters and their vehicles, including professional firefighters and members of volunteer fire departments.

"I believe that the law will contribute to more frequent lines and a better service, especially for islanders," Bilaver said.

Marijana Puljak announced that she would support the bill on behalf of the parliamentary group of the Centre and GLAS parties, saying that transport was of vital importance for the inhabitants for economic development, improving living conditions and work on islands.

Marina Opačak Bilić (Social Democrats Group) agreed with that, stressing that without good connectivity, which had to exist throughout the year, island populations would decline. She also asked whether the inhabitants of Pelješac would lose their existing boat lines due to the construction of the bridge.

Urša Raukar Gamulin (Green-Left Bloc) thinks the law may be even more important to island inhabitants than the Islands Act because, she said, it is crucial to prevent people from leaving and facilitating island life.

Noting that the law was another step forward in better island transport connectivity, Branko Bačić (HDZ) said that there were 51 state lines (ferry, boat and fast boat lines) and that maritime transport involved about 14 million passengers and 3.5 million vehicles.

He also said that the state allocated about HRK 315 million per year for maritime transport from the budget.

Recalling that the national passenger shipping company Jadrolinija this year celebrated its 70th anniversary, Bačić said that it had taken a big step forward over the past 15 years in the procurement of better and faster ships and fleet rejuvenation. Also, in addition to Jadrolinija, private shipowners have turned to fast boat transport and the purchase of catamarans, which has led to even better island connectivity, he said.

Bačić said that although it was getting a bridge, Pelješac should stay an island because if Pag, Krk, Murter and Čiovo were islands, he saw no reason why Pelješac wouldn't be one.

For more, check out our dedicated politics section.

ZAGREB, 26 Jan 2022 - The office of the Parliament Speaker has received more than a thousand letters or petitions from citizens and office staff read each one individually and depending on their content, act accordingly.

"Admittedly, some letters do not require any action because they might just be a comment but we react by reading each one," the Parliament Speaker's office told Hina on Wednesday.

The statistics, however, indicate that in 2018 there were 403 petitions, in 2019 there were 293, in 2020 there were 247, and last year 176.

We assume the number decreased due to the coronavirus pandemic, the office said.

Citizens complain about various matters, mostly about the conduct of state and local government, health, welfare, judiciary, and many are not informed of the competencies of certain state institutions so they write to the Sabor.

In any case, the correspondence is forwarded to the competent bodies and we ask that they reply to the sender.

The office added that they also have some people who write regularly and not only to the Sabor but other institutions too.

Parliament  Speaker Gordan Jandroković confirmed on Tuesday that the Sabor receives petitions from citizens and added that he had investigated claims about an acquaintance of his concerning the state property rented to that acquaintance. Jandrokoivć added that he did not overstep his duties because he personally reacted to a complaint by a citizen which is something his office receives every day.

For more, check out our dedicated politics section.