ZAGREB, September 11, 2019 - Croatia's candidate for a commissioner in the new European Commission, Dubravka Šuica, who was proposed by EC President-elect Ursula von der Leyen to be the Commission's Vice President for Democracy and Demography, said on Tuesday that this nomination was great recognition of the Croatian politics.

Von der Leyen earlier in the day unveiled her team and after that the future Croatian commissioner tweeted that she was honoured to take part in the first gender-balanced European Commission.

"It is a great honour for me that we (Croatia) are given a post of the Vice President. Croatia is the youngest EU member and this is great acknowledgement for the work of our politics and our Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, who was one of the main negotiators and had a definitely a say in the process of giving us this portfolio," Šuica said in her address to Croatian reporters in Brussels.

The EC president also decided to appoint Šuica as the head of a team responsible for organising a two-year conference on the future of Europe which should present what sort of European Union its citizens desire.

This includes discussions with citizens and dialogue which we have not had to date. It is necessary to listen to EU citizens who feel sometimes to be distanced from the European Union. I am supposed to be most visible in these efforts in central and east Europe, where democratic values are shaken sometime, Šuica said.

As for the sector of demography, Šuica said that many countries in the Union were faced with a population decline.

We are going to delve into this problem, and we are going to deal with brain drain and reasons why young people are leaving their countries, Šuica said adding that she would try to solve this issue horizontally.

The EC President-elect sent letters to each of 27 members of her team, and in her letter to the Croatian candidate, von der Leyen underscores that she expects palpable results regarding the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Šuica is supposed to prepare a report on the impact of demographic changes on different groups in societies in the first six months of her term, and identify models for dealing with those issues.

The Croatian Commissioner will coordinate work on a long-term vision for rural areas and is also supposed to coordinate activities aimed at preparing overall strategy on the rights of children.

More news about Croatia and the EU can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, September 10, 2019 - European Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday said that Vice-president-designate for Democracy and Demography, Croatian Dubravka Šuica, would be responsible for organising a conference on the future of Europe which should present what sort of European Union its citizens desire.

The conference will start in 2020 and will continue for two years. It has been designed to be a forum to connect European citizens, civil society organisations and European institutions with the aim of encouraging Europeans to say what sort of Union they want and how to manage it.

Šuica who has been an MEP, was nominated on Tuesday for the position of vice-president for democracy and demography.

She will be responsible on behalf of the EC for the Conference on the Future of Europe. That is a huge, vital process for our democracy. She will work closely with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. It is very important to implement that programme in the next two and a half years, von der Leyen said.

Referring to Šuica's portfolio von der Leyen said that this is a fantastic area that includes topics such as searching for balance between work and family life and an ageing labour force.

A lot can be done here, von der Leyen said noting that there are cities and regions that have successfully shown that the trend can be turned around to stop the population decrease.

"We want to bring new impetus to Europe's democracy. This is our joint responsibility. Democracy is more than voting in elections every 5 years. It is about having your voice heard and being able to participate in the way society is built," the EC president added.

One of the EC's five new vice-presidents, Šuica has been elected to the European Parliament three times. She was a vice-president of the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs, and of the EP delegation for relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. In June this year she became a vice-president of the European People's Party (EPP).

More news about Dubravka Šuica can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, September 10, 2019 - The Croatian candidate for a European commissioner, Dubravka Šuica, has been nominated Commission Vice-President for Democracy and Demography, European Commission President-Elect Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday.

Šuica (62) served three terms as a member of the Croatian Parliament from 2001 to 2011. Since 2004 she has been elected Vice-President of the Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities for five times in a row.

In October 2012 Šuica was elected vice-president of the association of women of the European People's Party (EPP). In April 2013 she was elected a member of the European Parliament and was re-elected in May 2014 and May 2019. She served as Vice-Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Delegation for Relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina and with Kosovo. In June this year she became Vice-Chair of the EPP group, the largest political grouping in the European Parliament.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Tuesday that the nomination of Dubravka Šuica for the European Commission's Vice-President for Democracy and Demography, which he described as a very important portfolio, is recognition of Croatia's strength in the EU.

Addressing a press conference in Government House after the announcement, Plenković said that this is an exceptionally significant department in the Commission. "It will deal with existential topics for a series of member states," said Plenković.

He underscored that this was confirmation of Croatia's strength and is the result of the talks with EC President Ursula von der Leyen.

More news about Croatia and the EU can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, August 22, 2019 - Addressing a conference of Croatian diplomats in Zagreb on Thursday, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković advised them to be careful in choosing their associates, following a recent scandal of a former first secretary in the Croatian embassy in Berlin, Elizabeta Mađarević who was suspended from the diplomatic service due to her racist and xenophobic remarks on her social media profiles.

Plenković reiterated the condemnation of racist and xenophobic statements made by the former diplomat Mađarević. President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, who joined in the condemnation of the scandal, said that the incident had happened also owing to "omissions in the system".

The case of the dismissed embassy secretary to some extent dominated the annual conference of Croatia's diplomats, however, the event also highlighted the latest successes of the Croatian diplomacy, including the election of Croatia's Marija Pejčinović Burić as the secretary-general of the Council of Europe and the appointment of former Croatian member of parliament, Ivana Maletić to the European Court of Auditors.

The participants in the conference agreed that Dubravka Šuica, who has been proposed for a Croatian member of the future European Commission, is good candidate for the Croatian representative at the EC.

"The election of Pejčinović Burić for the Council of Europe secretary-general is a great Croatian success, we who lobbied for her are aware of that," said Croatian's Foreign and European Affairs Minister Gordan Grlić Radman who succeeded her in the ministerial post.

The biggest challenges facing Croatia in the near future will stem from Croatia's chairmanship over the EU in the first half of 2020, the top officials said at the conference.

Plenković said that one of the priorities of Croatia's presidency would be demographic revitalisation.

Negative demographic trends are present in the whole of Europe, he added.

More news about Croatia and the European Union can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, August 21, 2019 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković on Tuesday confirmed that Croatia would nominate Dubravka Šuica for its Commissioner in the new European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen.

"Following internal consultations and talks with the new EC President Ursula von der Leyen, we are going to make the decision at tomorrow's meeting of the inner cabinet that we nominate Dubravka Šuica for our new member of the European Commission," Plenković told reporters after the ceremony of opening the 6th World Bridge Youth Open Championships in the Croatian seaside resort of Opatija.

A Croatian member of the European Parliament, Dubravka Šuica, has been elected to the EP three times, and her first election of a Croatian MEP was in 2013 when Croatia joined the Union. She was reelected in 2014 and in 2019.

Šuica, 62, a teacher of English and German language and literature, worked in several schools in her hometown of Dubrovnik and was the headmaster of a local grammar school. During her political career, Šuica, an official of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), was a member of the national parliament and the mayor of Dubrovnik from 2001 to 2009.

Šuica has been a vice-president of the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs, and of the EP delegation for relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. In June this year she became a vice-president of the European People's Party (EPP).

The nominated commissioners proposed by EC President Ursula von der Leyen are to be confirmed by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union.

More news about Croatia and the European Union can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, August 20, 2019 - The Fortenova Group, that has taken over the sound segment of the ailing conglomerate Agrokor, has informed the European Commission about its intention to take over the Slovenian chain of shops, Mercator, the Slovenian news agency STA reported on Tuesday.

Agrokor acquired the Slovenian retailer Mercator in 2014.

A source from the group today confirmed that they had notified the EC about its move and the Zagreb-based group started the procedure for a prior concentration approval on 13 August in Brussels.

Fortenova does not want to prejudge the outcome of the control procedure before the EC.

Currently, 69.57% of the Mercator stock is held by Agrokor, Russia's Sberbank holds 18.54%, and the remaining 11.89% is held by various banks and private investors, the local media report.

More news about Fortenova can be found in the Business section.

ZAGREB, August 15, 2019 - The Croatian nominee for one of European commissioners will be nominated at the first government session after the summer recess, on August 22, the Jutarnji List daily reported on Thursday.

The name of the Croatian European commissioner is being kept secret, with Dubravka Šuica, an experienced member of the European Parliament from the HDZ party, being considered as the likeliest nominee.

The final decision is to be made by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, however, the possibility of some other candidate being nominated is not ruled out either and depends on the department the prime minister negotiates with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a source at the government told Jutarnji List.

Once the government decides who to nominate, its decision will be forwarded to the parliamentary Committee on European Affairs, after which the prime minister will send the EC president a letter with the candidate's name by August 26.

Since Croatia has a better position than five years ago, we can get a good department, the government source told Hina.

In the first weeks after the summer recess, the government is also expected to hold talks with trade unions on their demand for a wage increase and on the tax and pension reforms, the daily says.

More news about Croatia and the European Union can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, July 30, 2019 - Croatia is an exceptionally successful European story, European Commissioner president elect Ursula von der Leyen said in a brief address to the press upon arriving in Zagreb on Tuesday ahead of talks with Prime Minister Andrej Plenković.

Croatia is the youngest member of the European Union yet at the start of 2020 it will chair the Council of the EU.

Croatia is an exceptionally successful story and it is model for many, many countries, said Von der Leyen.

She expressed her admiration for Croatia's achievements and thanked Croatia and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković for supporting her election as the EC's president.

Von der Leyen presented her platform two weeks ago and on Tuesday recalled important topics such as innovations, digitisation, and demography.

I think that there are many opportunities in the demography challenge if we approach that issue in the right way, she said.

She underscored support to parents and subsidies. Population decrease is a problem facing many countries.

But Europe is a leader and we can investigate how to approach that problem and benefit from it, because there are ways that challenges can be transformed into opportunities, she said.

She reiterated the objectives of her presidency.

My political objectives are to achieve a balance between the east and west, to achieve a balance between the north and south, to achieve a balance between smaller and larger members, she said. But that can only be possible through unity, she underscored.

If we are united, advanced, strong, if we speak strongly with a European voice, we can succeed, Von der Leyen said.

Prime Minister Plenković said that Croatia would use today's talks to present Croatia's particularities to the EC president.

Croatia is catching up not only with older member states but with new ones who entered in 2004 and in 2007, so that it can arrive at the level that is appropriate to those who are developed in this European family, he said.

He mentioned fulfilling all the criteria for Croatia to access the Schengen Area, and a strategy to introduce the euro currency.

More news about Croatia and the European Union can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, July 28, 2019 - The European Commission Representation in Croatia is organising a film night on July 28 on the summer stage of Zagreb's Tuškanac cinema with free popcorn and screenings of shorts from the #EUandME campaign as well as the US feature "Bookshop" by Isabel Coixet.

The short films from the #EUandME campaign focus on the everyday advantages of life in the EU. They were made by prominent European directors, including "Debut" by Dalibor Matanić of Croatia, "The Loner" by Tomasz Konecki of Poland and "Party Animal" by Yorgos Zois of Greece.

As part of the event, visitors will have the opportunity to learn about their rights in various areas of life in the EU which, organisers say, provides citizens with many opportunities to do what they love by helping them through EU initiatives.

The Commission launched the #EUandME campaign to inform people aged 17 to 35 about the values and benefits of the EU and its citizens' rights as well as about how they can be helped in realising their passions and ambitions.

The campaign focuses on mobility, digital technology, skills and business, sustainability, and rights.

More news about Croatia and the EU can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, July 25, 2019 - The new European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will visit Croatia, "the newest and strongly pro-European member state", on Tuesday, her spokesman Jens Flosdorff told Hina on Thursday.

He said that the Commission president was looking forward to cooperating with Croatia, which assumes the rotating six-month presidency of the EU in the first half of 2020.

Croatia is one of three countries which the newly-elected head of the EU executive has chosen to visit first. She visited Paris on Tuesday, she is scheduled to visit Warsaw on Thursday and is due in Zagreb next Tuesday.

It is expected that Von der Leyen and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković will discuss the priorities of the Croatian presidency, the EU's multiannual financial framework and Croatia's bid to enter the Schengen area and the eurozone.

During negotiations on the new Commission chief, Plenković was among those who insisted the most that the post belonged to the European People's Party, the relative winner of May's European Parliament elections.

Von der Leyen has asked the member states to submit their nominations for members of the European Commission by August 26. Sixteen of the 28 member states have done so to date, nominating only six women. The new Commission president wanted each member state to nominate two candidates, a woman and a man, but so far none has done this. Countries that nominate a woman have a greater chance of getting a department that they want.

More news about Croatia and the EU can be found in the Politics section.