ZAGREB, 7 Oct 2021 - A conference on demographic challenges in Croatia and the EU after the pandemic brought together in Zagreb on Thursday members of the scientific community and government officials who said that COVID-19 had negatively affected demographic trends but also opened new opportunities on the labor market.

European Commissioner Vice President for Democracy and Demography Dubravka Šuica said statistical data for 2020 indicated a continuing decline in the birth rate in the majority of member states.

However, COVID has also opened new opportunities, primarily in the labor market, with increasingly frequent remote work, said Šuica, concluding that digital and green transition had become key to success.

This has opened opportunities for Croatia, not just for its young people but in terms of the country's attractiveness as a place to live in for other European Union citizens, Šuica added.

If we want to keep young people in Croatia and make it more attractive, we have to invest in regional development, transport connectivity, and hyper-connectivity. The European recovery plan, she said, is a unique opportunity to come out of the pandemic stronger, greener, and more digitized.

Šuica noted that in slightly more than a year, demography has been imposed as the third unavoidable transition for the European Commission.

In Croatia, about 100 people are born a day while 150 die

The prime minister's special envoy and chief-of-staff, Zvonimir Frka Petešić, said that the conference needs to include all generations and that today's topic is important for Croatia which, along with another 15 member states, is faced with an aging population.

Croatia's population has been decreasing since 1991, and about 150 people die each day while about 100 are born, which is why Prime Minister Andrej Plenković stressed last year that the nation's demographic survival is a strategic issue, said Frka Petešić.

He recalled that after the European election in 2019, Croatia had asked that the EU's new strategic program include demography as a priority. During its presidency of the EU, Croatia led the process of adopting conclusions on demographic challenges which made it possible for future demographic measures to be financed from European funds.

How much the EU has aged can be seen in data which shows that in 1900 the population of today's EU countries accounted for 25% of the world population while today it accounts for only 5.5%, said Frka Petešić.

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September the 11th, 2021 - The Croatian 2021 census is about to get underway, and as of Monday, you can fill in your details for yourself and other members of your household online via the e-Citizens (e-Gradjani) system.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, a press conference entitled “CENSUS 21” from the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Central State Office for the Development of the Digital Society was held yesterday on the occasion of the beginning of the first digital Census of the Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Croatia 2021.

Namely, from September the 13th to October the 17th, 2021, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) will conduct the very first digital Census of the Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Croatia in two phases and in two ways, and residents of the country will be able to choose the census method they prefer. Namely, in the first phase, people will be able to fill in the Croatian 2021 census through the popular e-Citizens system.

The first phase of the Croatian 2021 census

The first phase of self-enumeration through the e-Citizens system will continue from September the 13th to the 26th, and the second phase of enumeration, when enumerators will go out onto the field, will last from September the 27th to October the 17th, according to the CBS.

Those running the process have called on all of Croatia's residents to please find a few minutes to enumerate themselves in the first phase of self-enumeration through the e-Citizens system.

During this period, they will have the opportunity to independently list themselves and all of the members of their household when it suits them best. One household member with a credential to use the e-Citizens platform is enough to list their household and all its members. After completing the Croatian 2021 census questionnaire and successfully completing and sending off the e-census, the respondent will receive a unique control code generated at the time of submission of the e-census, which is evidence of having already gone through the process online, independently.

The control code should then be written down on paper, photographed or printed and saved until the second phase of the Croatian 2011 census (field census) takes place, so that the respondent can give the control code to the enumerator to control the scope of the census.

One e-Citizens credential is enough for the whole household

You can also list your elderly relatives (parents, grandparents or someone else) who live in another household with their credentials, the CBS points out. The rule in e-enumeration is that one household is enumerated with one credential.

The census is based on a statement

According to the Law on Official Statistics, all data collected during the Croatian 2021 census is secret and will be used exclusively for statistical purposes, in other words, the census is not the basis for exercising any rights or obligations, the Central Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.

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September the 3rd, 2021 - The Croatian census is due to be carried out in two weeks, and every single resident of Croatia needs to partake. If you refuse to do so, a fine of between 2,000 and 5,000 kuna could be issued to you.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, every inhabitant single legal resident of the Republic of Croatia is subject to the Croatian Census Act, according to which every person who refuses to be enumerated faces a fine of two to five thousand kuna.

Lidija Brkovic, the director of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), spoke for local portal Glas Slavonije about the Croatian census, which is set to begin in two weeks following a coronavirus-induced delay earlier on in the year.

"The Croatian census is based on an individual statement, and the enumerator has no right to ask for documents or check the answers that a person gives. Every resident of Croatia is subject to is the Act on the Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Croatia in 2021, which provides for the issuing of fines from 2,000 to 5,000 kuna for a misdemeanor of a natural person if they refuse to provide their data for the census. People can have full confidence in the Central Bureau of Statistics because all the data collected by the Bureau remains an official secret,'' assured Brkovic.

Two phases of the 2021 Croatian census - online and offline

The Croatian census will be conducted in two phases - the first will be a ''self-census'' of residents online through the e-Citizens (e-Gradjani) system, followed by a field census of those who didn't register online. The fieldwork begins on September the 27th and will run through until October the 17th, 2021.

“The first phase of self-enumeration through the e-Citizens system will last from September the 13th to the 26th, and just one person in the household who uses the system is enough and will be able to enumerate all members of their household. If more than one household member uses the e-Citizens system, it still must only be one person listing all of the household members,'' said Brkovic.

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August the 12th, 2021 - The Croatian census is set to begin in the surprisingly short time of just three weeks. With no campaign to get people's attention to speak of, there are questions as to how it will go being posed.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, former Central Bureau of Statistics' director Marko Kristof spoke for N1 about the upcoming Croatian census, the largest project of the Central Bureau of Statistics that is conducted every ten years.

"This is the most demanding statistical survey and the largest activity of any statistical office. Its a huge job and a great methodological and communication challenge,'' warned Kristof, adding that this year's Croatian census is even more demanding because the data from different sources will all be combined. Namely, in addition to contacting residents in the field, residents will be able to fill in the censues themselves through the popular e-Citizens (e-Gradjani) system.

“Filling in the Croatian census through the e-citizens system is a transition to the complete abolition of the census. Modern countries no longer conduct the census by going door to door,'' Kristof stated, adding that he believes this will be a very good step forward.

There are three weeks left until the Croatian census starts being carried out, and Kristof points out that not much information about it is even known yet - no campaign has been conducted to explain to residents what the census is for and that the key thing is to enumerate people in their usual places of residence. He hopes, he says, that things in this regard will be done in a proper and timely manner.

As for the date itself, he says it's good that the reference date has been moved from the traditional March the 31st, when the epidemic was much stronger than it is now. "The second thing is that if the census had been conducted then, it would have been too politicised,'' he explained.

He stated that the biggest challenge in any census is to determine the permanent population: ''When you have several different choices, it's an additional challenge. There's a list of households and dwellings, not just a list of people. The key thing is whether the person was staying in the place where he/she was listed at the reference moment.

"There's a consensus among demographers that there will be less than four million of us"

Kristof says it is necessary to enumerate the entire population and if a person refuses to participate, there is a possibility of punishment. but he isn't at all sure how that could ever be implemented.

He expects the number of Croatian residents to be smaller. "There's a consensus among demographers that there will be less than four million residents of Croatia. The population will be the biggest challenge. We'll find out how many people are listed, but when it comes to the exact number of residents, we'll need to wait a while. European regulations say the official results should come two years after the census is carried out. We could get the final results at the end of 2022,'' he said.

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July the 22nd, 2021 - The Dugopolje Municipality near Split has decided to raise the cash sum it gives to new parents in an attempt to encourage the birth of more children in the area.

Croatia's demographic crisis didn't come about with the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen many people take the plunge and head abroad in search of more stability following lockdowns and restrictions within the tourism industry, on which many jobs rely. It wasn't even new when the country finally joined the European Union back in July 2013 and when borders opened for the Croatian labour force.

Waves of emigration are very common for Croatia, with a huge number of people leaving during the 70s, 80s and 90s, typically, at least back then, for political reasons. Now, while politics certainly continues to play a significant role, it isn't the only deciding factor for most. The desire for a country with more economic stability, less red tape and a more forgiving system is what drives most people outside of Croatian borders, and the demographic crisis didn't even wane when travel restrictions were harsher last year, with many Croats still leaving to the likes of Ireland and Germany without looking back.

While the typically overlooked region of Eastern Croatia has always been dominant in this trend, with villages and towns emptying out at a worrying rate, the demographic crisis has spread further, with even ''richer'' areas where jobs were usually far easier to come by such as Dalmatia seeing people hop on planes and coaches with one way tickets. The Dugopolje Municipality has, as a result, opted to up the cash fee given to parents for each child born in the area.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Perica Bosancic, the mayor of Dugopolje, a municipality with about 3,500 inhabitants close to Solin (formerly Salona) took to Facebook to post about the increase in fees for newborn children in the Dugopolje Municipality.

As he wrote, the fee for the first born child will be 5,000 kuna, instead of the previous 3,000 kuna, and for the second 10,000 kuna instead of the previous 5,000 kuna.

''We announced this back on the 18th of April, and on July 20th, we kept our promise. We increased the benefits for newborns from 3,000 kuna to 5,000 kuna for the first child, from 5,000 kuna to 10,000 kuna for the second, and for the third, we increased the benefit to 15,000 kuna. Each subsequent child will see the parents paid an additional 15,000 kuna (meaning that the fourth child is is 30,000 kuna, the fifth is 45,000 kuna, etc.…). I'd like to thank the councilors for unanimously supporting this proposal,'' Bosancic wrote on Facebook.

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July the 4th, 2021 - The vast majority of newer Croatian emigrants have a poor perception of their homeland, with a fourth of them planning to adopt German nationality and apparently leave any trace of Croatia behind them.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, only around eight percent of parents from the newer generation of Croatian emigrants have enrolled their children in some form of Croatian curriculum in Germany, and more than 27 percent want to take out German citizenship, Vecernji list reports.

In addition, newer Croatian emigrants also visit Croatian Catholic missions/parishes less and have been removed from the register of those of the Catholic faith over in Germany.

This was shown by the research of political scientist and historian Tade Juric from the Croatian Catholic University entitled ''The perception of emigrants about Croatia" conducted in the diaspora in Germany on a sample of 1,200 respondents in 2018 and 534 respondents in 2021.

While many older Croatian emigrants, Juric points out, have lived for Croatia for most of their lives and invested all their capital, knowledge and emotions into the country, new research shows that the recent emigration from the so-called ''EU wave'' of emigration doesn't really have much of this idealisation of the homeland, on the contrary, a negative image among them prevails.

By the end of December 2020, Croatia had only 4.036 million inhabitants according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), and the emigration of citizens was't stopped during last year's pandemic-dominated travel chaos, in which 34,046 citizens still emigrated from Croatia, with 33,414 people immigrating to Croatia. Last year, 26,355 citizens emigrated to Germany alone.

Juric's research shows that Croatian emigrants believe that homeland and those who have left Croatia aren't effectively and successfully connected, that Croats in the homeland have a negative attitude towards Croatian emigrants and nurture numerous prejudices towards emigrants, but also that Croatia doesn't do enough to help emigrants and Croats outside Croatia.

''More than half of the newer Croatian emigrants have an extremely negative perception of the Croatian Government (HDZ) and events in the homeland, and only 5.6 percent have maintained a positive perception of Croatia at all,'' explained Juric.

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May the 28th, 2021 - The coronavirus crisis might be the ''crisis of the moment'' as morbid as that sounds, but the Croatian demographic crisis is never far from the surface. The issues with people not only leaving but dying in Croatia are dire, and with losses of 20,000 people per year, plus emigration, the country is in a horrendous position demographically.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ana Blaskovic writes, the number one topic which needs to be discussed is demography because Croatia at the very end of the world in terms of demographic trends, warned Marin Strmota from the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb. By combining emigration and population loss, Croatia is losing its working-age population, which has devastating consequences. With the fall in birth rates, Strmota warns, we're losing 20,000 people a year, and if emigration is added to that account, the Croatian demographic picture is the worst on the planet.

"The most affected countries are Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia," Strmota said. In the last wave of emigration to Ireland and Germany in the last 7-8 years, about 400,000 people with Croatian citizenship emigrated.

"The problem is the age structure, it's an economic problem. The able-bodied people emigrate, which means that the share of those who pay into the pension and social security system is continually decreasing. Unfortunately, we can't escape from that, even the most optimistic forecasts don't see an increase in the workforce happening,'' added Strmota.

An additional but pressing issue for the Croatian demographic picture is that the labour market is entered late only to be left very early on, and there is an imbalance of what employers need and the skills and knowledge that Croatian workers have,'' added Strmota's faculty colleague Kresimir Ivanda.

“A fifth of those between the ages of 25 and 29 aren't working or are looking for work, and the situation is even worse with early retirements after the age of 50 when economic activity is rapidly declining,” he says.

"Croatia has the second shortest working life in Europe, of a mere 33 years, and 78 years is the average life expectancy," Ivanda illustrated.

"In terms of education and workforce, Croatia is currently where developed countries like Germany were decades ago. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the European Union is a single labour market and young people can apply to work anywhere in the bloc, and Croatia must figure out how to be the best of all to attract workers, and not just be a transit zone to other countries,'' he concluded.

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May the 20th, 2021 - It isn't new information, unless you've been living under a rock of course, that the Croatian demographic picture is far from ideal. Economic and demographic issues have reigned strong since long before the coronavirus pandemic struck, and some counties are far worse off than others. Sisak-Moslavina County currently being the most worrisome.

Croatia, like many Mediterranean countries, has an ageing population. With many members of the working age population leaving en masse to other European countries, taking advantage of the borders opening and the scrapping of work permits ever since Croatia joined the EU back in July 2013, this situation has only grown worse.

Traditionally, the Dalmatian coast has always fared better economically than more or less everywhere else in the country with the exception of Zagreb. With tourism providing for as much as 20 percent of Croatia's GDP, the summer months are employment-rich (in as much as is possible in the Croatian sense) and all about earning enough money to survive the winter before doing it all over again in Croatia's seasonal employment trap in which it has been stuck for years.

Continental Croatia, and particularly Eastern Croatia, have never had the God-given luxury of the Adriatic sea at their doorstep and as such have never been able to rest easily on their laurels in the same way Dubrovnik and Split do on an annual basis. The former bread basket of not only Croatia but the region, Slavonia and Baranja, have been experiencing a brain drain for very many years, with many other locations in Eastern and Central Croatia experiencing the same.

Sisak-Moslavina County, which was the victim of a devastating earthquake back at the very end of December last year, is among the most concerning of all. Now with more retired people than employed people, it's difficult to see how the future might look for this county. 

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Northern Croatia is a convincing national champion in terms of the ratio of total employees and pensioners, according to data from the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute.

According to this recently released data, Medjimurje County (1.66) and Varazdin County (1.54) have the highest ratio in favour of workers. By far the worst is the aforementioned Sisak-Moslavina County, which has more retirees than it does employees (the ratio is a troubling 0.95), followed by Sibenik and Karlovac (1.03) and Pozega County (1.04).

Among those cities which are also municipal county heads, Northern Croatia is again in the lead: in the top five in terms of the ratio of workers and pensioners there are three Northern Croatian cities, Varazdin (2.62), Cakovec (2.46) and Koprivnica (1.92). This data refets to figures recorded back the end of March this year, writes Danica.hr.

The average for the Republic of Croatia is 1.25 (just over one employee per pensioner), which is a long-term unsustainable situation for every sort of economy. Croatia as a whole currently has about 1.55 million employees and about 1.24 million retirees.

For more on Croatian demographics, follow our lifestyle section.

April the 2nd, 2021 - The number of Croatian emigrants in Germany has doubled since Croatia joined the European Union (EU) back in July 2013 and freedom of movement laws became applicable to the country.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, there were 426,845 Croatian emigrants in Germany last year, which means that the number of Croatian citizens in that country almost doubled after Croatia's accession to the EU because there were 224,971 of them registered there back in 2012, Vecernji list reports.

According to the National Statistics Office in Wiesbaden, Croatian emigrants in Germany are in 6th place when it comes to foreign immigrants after the citizens of Turkey, Poland, Syria, Romania and Italy. Last year, 26,335 Croatian citizens immigrated from Croatia to Germany.

In the pandemic dominated year, Germany had the lowest influx of foreigners, but the question is how comforting it is that fewer Croatian citizens emigrated last year, especially compared to the worst years of exodus in 2018, 2017, and 2016 when, according to the precise German statistics, more than 50,000 Croatian citizens arrived in Germany.

Political scientist and historian Tado Juric from the Croatian Catholic University predicts that due to the change in the way of working brought about by the pandemic, which will increasingly lead to more and more remote work, the emigration of Croats to Germany could stop within around five years, and some of those previous Croatian emigrants in Germany could also return.

"The West won't give up on importing labour for some time to come as a key measure in rebuilding its population. But even that will not last forever. Under the influence of the fourth industrial revolution, which gained unprecedented acceleration with the appearance of the coronavirus crisis, a completely new form of economy was created.

Teleworking will replace many jobs in such a way that after the socialisation of workers and students, which we're only just witnessing, many occupations will move into the field of teleworking. That means that a worker from Moldova, for example, will do from his apartment what a Croat is doing now in Stuttgart. My assessment is that in five years, due to this complete transformation of the way of working that teleworking brings, emigration from Croatia will stop, but there will also be a bigger return of former emigrants home,'' said Juric.

For more on Croatian demographic issues, follow our politics page.

March the 2nd, 2021 - Croatia has lowered its income tax rate and there are hopes that the move might attract a few Croatian emigrants home from Ireland. Just how realistic is such a hope? To some - it's even laughable.

As Novac/Ivan Zilic writes, there are fewer and fewer people in Croatia. According to demographers' estimates, up to 10 percent fewer people can be expected in the new census than in the 2011 census, a dramatic drop for an already very small country. If, by any chance, we lost 10 percent of Croatian territory in 10 years, and not 10 percent of the people, the alarm would likely have been louder, but in Croatia, land has a price, but people don't.

At the same time, even from a narrow-minded economic perspective, people are the most valuable resource any country has. Without people there is nobody to create, produce, spend, fill the budget, pay pensions, without people there can be no economy. This is something that has placed such a spotlight on Croatian emigrants as the country's demographic picture worsens.

Although demographic decline is a deeply layered problem, one of the important factors of Croatian depopulation is emigration, especially after the country joined the European Union back in 2013, when whole families headed off abroad in search of a better life. According to official data, in the seven years since joining the European Union, over 100,000 more people emigrated from Croatia than immigrated to it, but that number is actually higher, because official statistics fail to fully cover the scale of emigration.

Youth unemployment

Often when analysing the causes of migration, economists talk about the factors that encourage migration from a person's home country and the factors that attract migration to their destination country (push and pull factors). Analysing the causes of migration, the European Parliament's report Exploring migration causes - why people migrate, lists three basic groups of push and pull factors - socio-political, demographic-economic and environmental.

In the case of Croatian emigrants, these factors are often reduced down to the labour market, which gives migration an economic connotation. Indeed, looking only at the basic indicators of employment opportunities in Croatia and the countries to which Croats have emigrated in the last decade - Germany, Austria and Ireland - it's clear how unattractive Croatian economic optics are. For example, according to Eurostat data for 2019, the average annual net income in Germany, Austria and Ireland is more than three times higher than it is in Croatia, while youth unemployment (15-24 years) in Croatia is almost three times higher than in the aforementioned countries.

In addition to the labour market, a poor political economy also contributes to Croatian emigrants making the decision to jump ship. According to the Corruption Perceptions Index, Croatia is at the very bottom of the European Union, while when it comes to the Democracy Index, calculated by The Economist, the country has been falling in recent years. But perhaps the most important indicator of the poor state of the political economy and the general lack of perspective are the results of the Life in Transition survey, conducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The results suggest that people in Croatia, but also in the entire former Yugoslavia, have record low beliefs that a decent life can be achieved through hard work and effort, and that political ties are a much more important factor.

Economic migration

It should be borne in mind that in the survey, Croatia is compared with post-transition countries and yet it still ranks low. By joining the European Union, the powers that be thought Croatia would become more powerful economically, but nobody counted on young, working age people going off to Ireland and Germany far more easily. They instead thought that Croatia would instead become as developed as Ireland and Germany. Not so.

Croatia's institutional and economic convergence with the European Union is a slow process, so emigration should be seen as a democratic act of "voting by foot". However, the emigration wave after Croatia's accession to the EU is a given situation. People who have left live in better and more responsible systems, and their return can be an opportunity to create the potential for social and economic change. Observing emigration to the Western Balkans, Ivlevs and King in their 2017 paper conclude that people who have a family member who emigrated have a lower propensity for corruption, and that emigration often causes the transfer of cultural norms from the place of emigration to the home country.

Additionally, there is evidence that the human capital that people acquire in migration in the event of return can have a positive impact on the economy. In a 2017 paper, Bahar and his co-workers looked at where refugees from the wars in the former Yugoslavia worked in Germany, and conclude that when these same people return to their countries, the sectors in which they worked begin to export more. Although the episode of war migration is different from the economic migration we're currently witnessing, some patterns can be revealed - people who have gone to more developed countries carry considerable human, financial and social capital, and an attempt should be made to bring them back.

Political will

Will many Croatian emigrants happily jump on a plane and return home from Ireland just because of a slightly lower income tax rate? In order to significantly eliminate the initial pressure on people to emigrate, Croatia needs to converge institutionally and economically with the European Union, and this requires more fundamental changes than changes in tax rates. We need to tackle the problems. Otherwise, existing worrying emigration and demographic trends will continue, and each new census will only bring worse news.

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