ZAGREB, 18 July 2022 - Economy Minister Davor Filipović said on Monday that for the next fortnight the price of petrol would be HRK 13.02 per litre, down from HRK 13.50, while the price of diesel would go up from HRK 13.08 to HRK 13.43.

Also, fuel prices on motorways and elsewhere will be equated and the government will extend the price cap on blue-dyed diesel to HRK 9.45 per litre for another two weeks, he told the press after a government conference call.

The retail margin stays HRK 0.65 per litre of petrol and diesel, as do excises of HRK 0.80 on petrol and HRK 0.40 on diesel.

"Without these government moves, the price of diesel would have been HRK 15.70 and the price of petrol HRK 14.92," the minister said.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)

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July the 4th, 2022 - Unless the government once again steps in quickly with some measures to mitigate the harsh blow to the pockets of this country's drivers as inflation drags on, Croatian fuel prices are set to shoot up yet again this week.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, according to unofficial information from HRT, eurosuper could cost around 16 kuna, and eurodiesel more than 16 and a half kuna unless the government intervenes this week. The Economy Minister recently said that the decision will be made after the weekend, and the Prime Minister announced a session of talks within the government on the subject for Monday.

Eurodiesel on Croatian motorways currently costs 14.57 kuna per litre, and Eurosuper 95 costs 14.06 kuna. A litre of basic Eurodiesel costs 13.08 kuna at fuel stations that are not on the motorways.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic has also announced the possible introduction of fuel vouchers if the situation fails to calm down.

"The introduction of fuel vouchers is possible this autumn, we're leaving that possibility open, but the government still has other tools at its disposal," Plenkovic said. "As for the vouchers, they'll go to those with lower incomes, and this is something that we have to do qualitatively and according to certain criteria," he added.

The head of the distributors' association: We're going to close the pumps on Tuesday if the government doesn't do something.

Armando Miljavac, the head of the Association of Small Oil Derivatives Dealers, says that on Tuesday, he will close the country's fuel stations if the government doesn't step in and do something. The association brings together more than sixty small dealers who manage about a hundred fuel stations throughout Croatia. "I don't know what to tell you. We're not very happy with this, these decisions should have been made already but here we are, we're still faced with uncertainty,'' said Miljavac for Index.

"If there is no decision on Tuesday that is acceptable for normal operations and the continuation of operations, we've decided to close the fuel stations. We've been trying to cope with this for eight months, we've exhausted all our reserves, the price differences have broken down...", continued Miljavac, adding that he wonders what will happen in autumn and states that things aren't looking good.

Economy Minister Davor Filipovic, We're considering all measures, there'll be a decision made today.

Minister Filipovic also commented on whether or not the government is preparing new measures ahead of Tuesday to try to tackle rising Croatian fuel prices, given the fact that further price hikes are expected. In an interview with Media Servis, Filipovic stated that there are still options when it comes to excise duties.

"We're considering all possible measures, so all options are on the table at the moment. We still have a few options when we talk about excise duties. We'll make a decision that will be beneficial, which will be satisfactory at this moment, but only when we see what the prices are going to actually be in the end,'' he explained, adding that decisions will be made today.

Fuel vouchers were announced as a longer-term measure to help the socially disadvantaged.

"This situation is so volatile that we can't predict what will happen in the next two weeks. Maybe in the next two weeks we'll have to react differently, not to talk about what the situation is going to be like come autumn. Vouchers are in the plan and they're scheduled to start sometime in autumn, but I'll talk more about the details when the time comes," said Filipovic.

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21 March 2022 - Economy and Sustainable Development Minister Tomislav Ćorić said on Monday that he expected fuel prices to go down on Tuesday, with the price of diesel being slightly above HRK 12 and the price of petrol slightly below HRK 12, while the price of blue-dyed diesel would be around HRK 8 per litre.

Ćorić, who was taking part in a reforestation drive in Zagreb's Maksimir Park, told reporters that the state could not guarantee that this would be the start of a process of price decline, adding that that would depend on prices on reference markets and further developments in the east of Europe.

The government last week adopted a directive to buffer the fuel price hike by doing away with the obligation for distributors to mix biofuel with diesel and petrol until the end of the year.

The directive is expected to enable distributors to reduce prices by about HRK 0.50.

(€1 = HRK 7.573601)

January 20th, 2022 - INA plans to implement contactless pay at their petrol pumps, but the terminals installed in the pilot phase haven’t had a trial run in over a year

Croatia’s leading oil company INA has been testing contactless payment at petrol pumps for a year and a half, reports Jutarnji list/Dora Koretić.

Petrol pumps at INA’s petrol station in Resnik were fitted with contactless payment terminals in 2020, aiming to limit close contact during the pandemic by allowing customers to pay for fuel without having to enter the store.

The terminals were recently removed because the company decided to test ‘other technical solutions available on the market’. This wouldn’t be an issue in itself, but as it turns out, the contactless payment terminals at the Resnik station were never made operational, making it unclear what exactly INA has been testing over the last 18 months.

The company stated this was a pilot project aiming to gather user feedback on contactless payment at petrol pumps using bank cards or fleet cards.

‘Customer satisfaction is our no.1 priority, which is why the company continuously works on developing new solutions to enable customers to purchase products and services at our stations in the simplest way possible. [The project] is still in the pilot phase, and for the sake of establishing the best technical solution the terminals have been removed temporarily. Installation of new ones is underway so that we could carry out an analysis of other technical solutions that are available on the market’, stated INA.

Despite how long it’s been since the pilot project was launched and the fact that the terminals were never put into use, INA state they consider digitalization a critical factor of business, especially in a time where preventative measures, such as maintaining physical distance and limiting the number of customers in stores, are of great importance.

The company has so far introduced contactless payment at the pump through the INA PAY mobile app, which is currently only available for corporate users holding an INA card. Coffee machines at INA  petrol stations are also equipped with contactless terminals. However, it still hasn’t been determined when mobile payment or other forms of contactless pay at the pump will become an option for private customers.

In contrast, many petrol stations in Slovenia offer customers the option to pay contactless at the pump. This mode of payment gained in popularity after the Slovenian government made Covid certificates a prerequisite for in-store payment at service stations, but not for contactless payment at petrol pumps.

July 10, 2021 - In its effort to knock down pollution and combat climate change, the European Union will propose a plan to achieve zero carbon emissions based on betting on electric options and no more on petrol and diesel.

Petrol and diesel are going down in history, the future is on electric vehicles, and the European Union on Wednesday is proposing a strategy to achieve carbon neutrality in the fight against climate change in the next decade, reports Index.hr.

The old continent is the cradle of prestigious car brands and has dominated car innovation for more than a century, but the car, which is the number one means of transport for Europeans, is to blame for greenhouse gas emissions.

Faced with this pressure, the European Union set a goal in 2020 to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

The European Commission is expected to propose new regulations on July 14 to achieve that goal, and according to several sources, the complete abolition of car emissions that use petrol and diesel from 2035 is being considered.

Electric vehicles will be the only ones able to meet such a requirement and will de facto be the only permitted means of transport in a completely new market.

In 2020, Europe introduced a maximum limit of 96 grams of CO2 per kilometer for car designers, but that amount should be reduced by 37.5 percent in 2030.

The reduction in carbon emissions should thus reach 60 percent in 2030 and then 100 percent in 2035.

Although these figures are still being debated, they are a huge compulsion for the automotive industry, which by 2027 must reckon with stricter pollution regulations for internal combustion engines with the use of petrol and diesel.

Takeoff of electric vehicles

In the automotive market, which has suffered a severe blow from the coronavirus pandemic, electric vehicles are making strong progress.

The share of electric cars is 8 percent of all registered vehicles in Western Europe in the first five months of this year, or 356,000 vehicles, and “which is more than in the whole of 2019,” says German analyst Matthias Schmidt.

The new regulations will further favor electric vehicles and increasingly lead to the rejection of hybrid and hybrid vehicles with charging, which combines a petrol engine and a battery.

This is a major challenge for an industry that employs 14.6 million people in the European Union and that still counts heavily on “transition technology”.

The lobby that has struggled for a long time in an effort to slow the transition is deeply divided today. Most members stress that too fast electrification would raise car prices and destroy jobs in favor of Chinese competition, which is ahead of Europe in batteries.

Volkswagen is ready

The automotive leader of the Volkswagen Group, whose fourth vehicle is sold in Europe, joined U.S. manufacturer Tesla in promoting 100 percent of electric vehicles after the 2015 scandal when he admitted to falsifying test results on the exhaust gases of his diesel engines.

"There is a huge conflict within the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA). Because of Dieselgate, Volkswagen has been forced to choose electric vehicles to repair its damaged reputation. The group has agreed to huge investments and is now producing them to comply with future laws," explains Matthias Schmidt.

“Volkswagen is in a perfect position to grab market shares and beat competitors,” he adds.

In June, Volkswagen announced that it would stop producing internal combustion engines in Europe between 2033 and 2035.

"The vehicle has been on the road for an average of 15 years. If we want to completely decarbonize transport in 2050, then we have to sell the last vehicle with a thermal engine by 2035 at the latest," said Diane Strauss of the NGO Transport and Environment for France.

In a classification released in June, the NGO named Daimler (Mercedes), BMW, Stellantis (PSA, Fiat), and Toyota as manufacturers whose projects were rated "unambitious" because they rely heavily on polluting hybrid vehicles.

Renault and Hyundai got better ratings even though they are also far behind Volkswagen and Volvo.

The future of internal combustion engines should be balanced between "2035, which is a premature year from the point of view of industry and society, and 2040 when it will be too late from the point of view of climate," said Pascal Canfin, chairman of the European Environment Committee. parliament.

Canfin advocates the creation of "several billion euros" funds that would help hundreds of small and medium-sized companies related to the automotive industry because it will be affected by the change in technology.

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