ZAGREB, 13 April, 2021 - MP Sandra Benčić of the green-left bloc said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Andrej Plenković was "lying that the National Recovery and Resilience Plan is completed," adding that it was an unambitious and incompetent programme which recycled 20-year-old reforms and projects.

Speaking to the press, Benčić said that MPs, who are due to debate the document on Wednesday, received only its summary because experts were still fine-tuning it.

She said the plan contained no links between investment in innovation and investment in the economy.

"The lack of ambition and incompetence of this programme is extremely worrying," Benčić said, adding that the plan would not help the economy and society to either recover or become more resilient to either climate change or other challenges of the 21st century.

Homeland Movement: Plan shows government has no daring for brave decisions

The whip of the Homeland Movement party, Stjepo Bartulica, said the summary of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan showed that the government lacked the daring for brave decisions and that Plenković had once again failed to adopt a serious strategy.

Bartulica said he saw no willingness for structural reforms and that the plan should have given more consideration to the demands and remarks by the enterprise sector as it was the one creating added value.

He said the plan also reflected no will to reform the health system, adding that the problem in healthcare was not doctors' expertise but how the system was managed and the monopoly of the Croatian Health Insurance Fund.

Speaking of totalitarian symbols, Bartulica said either all should be outlawed, including those of "communism and the totalitarian Yugoslavia," or that they be allowed as free speech.

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ZAGREB, 13 April, 2021 - The Bridge party on Tuesday criticised the government's National Recovery and Resilience Plan, noting that investing in the public sector will not finance economic recovery but rather cause new scandals and clientelism.

"Each kuna invested in the private sector will yield a return of four kuna and each kuna invested in the public sector means a maximum return of one kuna, if the money is used efficiently, which in Croatia is not the case," Bridge MP Zvonimir Troskot said at a news conference.

He said that he condemned the stigmatisation of people who think critically about the National Recovery and Resilience Plan as "people whose patriotism is dubious."

Ruling HDZ MP Grozdana Perić last week said that those who criticise the National Recovery and Resilience Plan "do not love Croatia."

"Grozdana Perić and the prime minister's special advisor on economy, Zvonimir Savić, are not the only economic strategists. There are the Institute of Economics, the Croatian Employers' Association, the Entrepreneurs' Association as well as independent economists who are saying that the National Plan is not good," said Troskot.

"If entrepreneurs are again disregarded, we won't have money for wages, pensions or COVID allowances," he said.

Bridge against banning "For homeland ready" salute

Bridge MP Nikola Grmoja commented on initiatives to ban the Ustasha salute "For the homeland ready."

"As regards the insignia of the Croatian Defence Force (HOS), that is a legal unit of the Croatian Army. We are not for bans but rather for education and clear distancing from all totalitarian regimes, Fascism, Nazism and Communism alike," said Grmoja, noting that one should not link HOS with the 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia and the Ustasha.

"Banning symbols turns them into a fetish, and we don't want that," he said.

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ZAGREB, 9 April, 2021 - Agriculture Minister Marija Vučković on Friday presented three contracts from the Rural Development Programme worth HRK 8.5 million to beneficiaries in Jarmina municipality in eastern Croatia.

She also attended the opening of "Jarmina", the first kindergarten in the municipality in which HRK 7 million was invested from EU funds and her ministry's Rural Development Programme. It will be attended by 75 children.

Vučković told the press this was the 12th kindergarten in Vukovar-Srijem County built with funds from the Rural Development Programme, for which HRK 56 million was ensured, adding that 200 kindergartens would be opened in Croatia thanks to over HRK 1 billion from the programme.

The 12 kindergartens have been opened in communities with a population of below 5,000.

Vučković said kindergartens were important for keeping young families in villages, adding that her ministry would soon advertise calls for the construction of more kindergartens, farmers' markets, firehouses and community culture centres.

Last year the Croatian EU presidency secured the support of the member states for a transitional regulation to enable continuity of financing until "the whole common agricultural policy reform is adopted," the minister said, adding that the reconstruction and construction of the social infrastructure in rural areas would continue.

Over €5 billion for Croatian agriculture

Vučković announced that Croatia would receive over €5 billion for agriculture in the EU's 2021-27 budget.

She said 12.9% of Croatian farmers and over 20% in Vukovar-Srijem County were under 41.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)

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ZAGREB, 9 April, 2021 - Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković on Friday extended his condolences to Queen Elizabeth II, the royal family and British people on the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

"On behalf of the Croatian Government, I express my most heartfelt condolences to Her Majesty The Queen @RoyalFamily and the British people on the passing of the Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Philip will be remembered for his lifetime of service to the United Kingdom," Plenković tweeted.

The Queen's husband died in Windsor aged 99, Buckingham Palace said.

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ZAGREB, 9 April (Hina) - A government representative on Friday accepted amendments by the ruling HDZ party group to a bill on local elections which ease previously proposed stricter rules for the nomination of candidates in elections and reasons for the termination of a local official's term.

A regulation has been eased under which a person with a final court verdict sentencing them to a prison term of at least six months or whose verdict has been changed to community service and a conditional verdict will be banned from running in elections, starting already with the May 16 local election.

The HDZ parliamentary group proposed that the ban should not apply to persons sentenced to prison for an unintentional crime, if their sentence has been changed to community service or a conditional sentence.

Also accepted were amendments that relax reasons for the termination of the term of a member of a representative body, municipal head, mayor and county head and their deputies.

If those officials have committed an unintentional crime and have been sentenced to prison but their sentence has been changed to community service or a conditional sentence, the terms of those officials will not cease, government representative Sanjin Rukavina said.

He did not accept Social Democrat MP Arsen Bauk's amendment under which those officials' terms would end also in case the party which has nominated them and on whose slates they have been elected has been given a final court verdict for an offence.

The government partially accepted amendments by the SDP, GLAS and Centre party groups under which the term of a member of a representative body, municipal head, mayor and county head stops on the day when they deregister their residence in their local government unit.

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ZAGREB, 9 April, 2021 - The Pensioners Together platform, which brings together a number of pensioners' associations and parties, on Friday presented its candidate for Zagreb Mayor, Milivoj Špika, and the candidate for deputy mayor, Blanka Sunara.

Addressing a news conference, Špika said that some candidates for Zagreb mayor behaved like revolutionaries, wishing to destroy current structures and announcing radical changes, while others acted as if Zagreb were their loot.

"Zagreb needs someone who will carry out peaceful transition from the current model of governance to a new model of running the city," Špika said, adding that the platform would focus on pensioners, workers with inadequate pay, people with blocked bank accounts and other social groups.

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ZAGREB, 9 April, 2021 - The Voice of Entrepreneurs association considers that the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, as proposed by the government, will destroy the chances for economic recovery, and calls for a radical change in the document.

In order for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan to have a greater impact, priority should be given to investments in the private sector, the association said in a statement issued on Friday.

Entrepreneurs think that the plan will not direct enough funds to small and medium-sized enterprises and that that will have a negative impact on the entire economy.

Unlike other countries, they add, Croatia does not intend to direct most of the funds from the recovery plan to the business sector and the most affected companies, sectors and citizens.

The current recovery and resilience plan relies mainly on state and local government projects and projects with low and long-term returns, and in some cases negative returns, which is contrary to the general goal of rapid recovery, the association said.

It is true, they add, that the plan envisages distributing 54% of the funds for the business sector and 46% for reforms in the public sector, but the 54% intended for the business sector includes investments in public companies that have so far demonstrated low efficiency, such as wastewater projects, waste management, road and transport infrastructure construction.

The National Recovery and Resilience Plan is thus not aimed at helping the private sector and encouraging the competitiveness of the Croatian economy, the association of entrepreneurs said, stressing that the existing plan is not oriented towards rapid recovery of domestic demand, investment in high return projects and technological innovation.

They call for prioritising private sector investment and focusing on high return projects.

Last week, the government presented the National Recovery and Resilience Plan for 2021-2026, which contains project proposals in six areas, worth a total of HRK 49.08 billion.

Of that, 54% is intended for projects in the business sector, 15% for education, science and research, 12% for building reconstruction, 10% for public administration and justice, 5% for health care and 4% for the labour market and social protection.

Digitisation and green energy transition feature in all six areas in the document.

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ZAGREB, 8 April, 2021 - Documents resulting from the Strategic Transformation in Agriculture and Rural Space (STARS) project will help determine how around five billion euros that have been made available for Croatia's agricultural sector will be spent, Agriculture Minister Marija Vučković said on Thursday.

The Agriculture Ministry and the World Bank cooperated on the STARS project, and the agreement on project cooperation was signed in October 2018.

Analyses, studies and guidelines made during the project have thus been significantly used also in making a draft agricultural strategy for the period until 2030, which has been put to public consultation, and in making a national aquaculture development plan for the period 2021-2027. Both documents are aimed at enhancing the sectors' competitiveness and adapting them to current conditions.

Numerous domestic and foreign experts, sector stakeholders, employees of the Agriculture Ministry and other Croatian institutions and universities cooperated on the project, with Vučković noting that the start of work on the project had coincided with debates about the future of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, which will affect financing priorities and development of agriculture in all member states.

The project served to reexamine the situation and needs of the Croatian farm sector, as well as the measures that are being implemented, and its documents will be used in deciding how the roughly five billion euros intended for Croatian agriculture will be used, Vučković said.

Great chances for development of Croatian farm sector

Project coordinator Svetlana Edmeades of the World Bank said that the World Bank strongly believed that Croatia had great chances for the development of its farm sector.

Farm producers have central place in the project, which identifies as national strategic goals an increase in productivity and in the resilience of farm production to climate change, stronger competitiveness of the agricultural and food sector, revival of rural economy and improving living conditions in rural areas.

Edmeades underlined the importance of knowledge and innovations, noting that the development of Croatia's agriculture should be green, resilient and inclusive, which includes, among other things, production of organic food, sector resilience to shocks, as well as greater involvement of smaller producers in existing value chains.

She said the project achievements were a number of reports that should serve as guidelines for the ministry and farm producers towards a green, resilient and inclusive agriculture.

The World Bank official said that the analyses were expected to significantly contribute to the government's programme with regard to specific targets in the farm sector, in the making of a national agricultural and rural development strategy, participation of agriculture in the national recovery and resilience plan, and national strategic planning within CAP.

Value of agricultural production to be raised to HRK 30bn by 2030 

State secretaries Tugomir Majdak, Zdravko Tušek and Šime Mršić presented the draft agricultural strategy for the period until 2030 and the national plan for the development of aquaculture in the period 2021-2027.

The officials said that the projected effects of the strategy until 2030 were an increase in labour productivity of 60% and the consequent increase in the value of farm production to HRK 30 billion, for which funds in the amount of €7.5 billion were envisaged.

This should be achieved, among other things, by a 35% increase in the number of locally bred fattening pigs, a 20% increase in cattle breeding, expanding areas under permanent crops by 5,000 hectares and areas where crops are grown under glass by 500 hectares, a 20% increase in the share of the food industry in GDP and a 30% increase in the number of producers in short supply chains.

The national plan for the development of aquaculture in the period 2021-2027, which is being made, will put emphasis on stronger competitiveness and the creation of 15% more jobs in the rural and coastal economies in the aquaculture value chain, including an increase in total production volume of 30%, a 35% increase in added value in the processing of aquaculture products, and an increase in the average annual consumption of aquaculture products per capita by as much as 50%, the Agriculture Ministry said.

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ZAGREB, 8 April, 2021 - Culture Minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek said on Thursday the most important thing in the reconstruction of the cultural heritage was to reinforce and repair all monuments in a short time and that the first allocation would help to carry out all urgent works in 18 months.

The first allocation at our disposal is €680 million from the European Solidarity Fund, she told the press, saying that the recently outlined national recovery and resilience plan included reconstruction funds.

Croatia also has at its disposal funds approved by the World Bank, she said, adding that she also expected the approval of an allocation following last December's earthquake in Sisak-Moslavina County.

She said the damage to the cultural heritage in Zagreb following the March 2020 quake was estimated at €7 billion.

The reconstruction of complex monuments such as Zagreb's Mirogoj cemetery would take years and the necessary funds will be raised from various sources, the minister said.

She said her ministry had received more than 130 acceptable reconstruction applications and that contracts had been signed for a little over 40 monuments, including sacral and public buildings.

She added that public procurement was already under way and that over the past year experts from the ministry and Zagreb's faculties of civil engineering, geodesy, and architecture had completed the required documents for all monuments.

The first objective is to reinforce the buildings to prevent them from being a threat and deteriorating, the minister said.

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ZAGREB, 8 April, 2021 - Zagreb's Mirogoj cemetery complex is one of the seven European most endangered monument localities in 2021, Culture and Media Minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek said at a news conference on Thursday.

The Culture and Media Ministry, in cooperation with the City of Zagreb, the City Institute for the Conservation of Cultural and Natural Heritage and the Zagreb Holding multi-utility conglomerate nominated the cemetery for the European Seven Most Endangered Programme, taking into account its specificity and value as the most important multiconfessional cemetery in Croatia and an exceptionally valuable cemetery at the European level, as well as the huge damage caused to it by the March 2020 earthquake, the minister said.

She recalled that the programme, implemented since 2013 by Europa Nostra in cooperation with the European Investment Bank Institute, each year puts emphasis on seven European localities.

That way experts and funds are mobilised so that together we can renovate the European cultural heritage, said Obuljen Koržinek.

She noted that a number of European experts, notably earthquake reconstruction experts, had offered various forms of help over the past year and that they would all be involved, notably in complex reconstruction projects.

"The preliminary work on the Mirogoj complex alone, to be financed from the European Solidarity Fund, has been estimated at HRK 97 million," she said, adding that this includes emergency repairs acceptable for financing under the European Solidarity Fund.

Those funds have been approved, documents are being collected and work will start relatively soon, she said, noting that it was clear to everyone that the renovation of Mirogoj would be a long-standing project requiring great professional engagement considering that the cemetery had not been renovated since its construction.

She said that at today's Europa Nostra presentation it was said that everyone would mobilise to help Croatia collect the necessary funding.

The other six most endangered monuments and localities of cultural heritage in Europe in 2021 are the Achensee Cog Railway (Tyrol, Austria), Five Southern Aegean Islands (Greece), Giusti Garden in Verona (Italy), Dečani Monastery (Kosovo), the Central Post Office in Skopje (North Macedonia) and the San Juan de Socueva Chapel and Hermitage (Cantabria, Spain).

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