ZAGREB, 17 March 2022 - In two to three weeks Croatian and Spanish scientists will start to examine materials necessary for building an EU power plant where electricity will be produced by fusion.

The Croatian and Spanish science ministers, Radovan Fuchs and Diana Morant, respectively, signed in Madrid on Wednesday an agreement green-lighting the DONES (Demo Oriented Neutron Source) project.

The EU wants to build the first demo power plant where electricity will be produced by the fusion of two lighter hydrogen atoms into a heavier one that releases huge amounts of energy. Currently, materials used to build power plants are unable to withstand such high temperatures and radiation.

In order for the construction of the first demo plant to begin in 2035, it is necessary to find the required construction materials.

"Croatia and Spain will examine materials from which fusion reactors should be made in the future... because we are talking about high intensity radiation," Fuchs told Hina.

Croatia and Spain agreed in 2018 to examine the materials together as part of the DONES project. A facility will be built in Granada, Spain and local scientists will work together with colleagues from Zagreb's Ruđer Bošković Institute.

Fuchs said the project was worth €400 million and that Croatia would participate with €30 million, the rest coming from Spain.

"This opens a whole range of possibilities for the participation of high tech companies building such experimental plants," he said, adding that Croatian companies are interested, too.

Fuchs visited Madrid as part of a Croatian delegation led by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, who met with his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez, who mentioned the future cooperation on this project at a joint press conference.

Fuchs said today's agreement was just the start of the whole story and that the project "begins in two or three weeks. There will be intensive traffic between Granada and Zagreb."

Croatia and Spain were among the countries that applied for the DONES project, submitting the documents required to the EU Fusion for Energy (F4E) body.

An F4E task force assessed that the locations the two countries proposed for the project, Spain's Granada and Croatia's in the Moslavina region, were both suitable but that Granada was more ready as a vacant technological park. The Moslavina location, an empty building site, serves as a backup location.

The Spanish Science Ministry said that since 2018, when the cooperation was agreed, Spain and Croatia had participated together in several European projects as part of the EUROfusion project.

"This is yet another step in the science cooperation between Spain and Croatia", said Minister Morant.

The ministry said the construction of the facility in Granada would create 1,000 jobs, including for 400 top scientists from all over the world.

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ZAGREB, 16 Oct, 2021 - Agriculture and the energy industry are the two main sectors enabling each society and state to function normally, and therefore in the next decade, €7.5 billion will be invested in the agricultural sector, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said in Zagreb on Saturday.

Addressing an Agriculture Ministry event dedicated to promoting farming, fisheries and forestry, the Prime Minister said that his cabinet spared no effort to help agricultural producers, the food and timber industries and the fisheries.

The government has sent to the parliament a draft strategy on agriculture, and the document, which should be adopted this year, envisages investments in agriculture of some €7.5 billion in the next decade, which should help the Croatian agricultural sector to reach the target of HRK 30 billion (€4 billion) of annual production.

During the term of this government, over a score of state aid schemes have been designed and mostly implemented, and their value is estimated at €253 million, provided from the state budget, Plenković said, recalling prompt interventions to address market disruptions caused by the coronavirus crisis and natural disasters.

In the livestock sector, nine measures and schemes are being implemented in response to problems caused by the COVID-19 crisis, and HRK 450 million has been made available as part of the government's aid schemes, he said, adding that an HRK 163.5 million scheme is in the pipeline to help businesses affected by fodder price rises.

From 2016 to 2019, state grants amounted to HRK 11.1 billion, and in 2020, HRK 3.2 billion was disbursed as state aid, the PM said.

The Rural Development Programme has made HRK 22.8 billion available to beneficiaries, and of that amount 18 billion has been contracted, and 13.8 billion has been disbursed for investments in agriculture, the PM told the event.

The fisheries branch has been provided with HRK 2.3 billion in grants within the Operational Programme for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, and to date more than 1.2 billion has been disbursed.

Plenković went on to say that the government has increased outlays for investments in food safety and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan envisages the provision of infrastructure for a food bank and for participants in the food donation chain. This is one of the important reforms, worth HRK 32 million, he said.

Agriculture Minister Marija Vučković said that the aim of the strategy would be to increase the output in the agricultural sector to HRK 30 billion annually until 2030.

The implementation of the strategy will require €7.5 billion, and the government plans allocations for this purpose in the amount of five billion euros until 2027 through the multiannual financial framework, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and the state budget, she explained.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)

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