March 10, 2020 - A closer look at how the coronavirus outbreak is effecting Croatian football.

Following the announced measures of the Croatian Civil Protection Staff from March 9, the relevant bodies of the Croatian Football Federation (HNS) issued instructions for playing football matches in the following period.

The following instructions have been determined by the leadership of the Croatian Football Federation, headed by President Davor Šuker and Executive Director Marijan Kustić, HNS Executive Board, HNS Medical Commission with President prof. Dr Dragan Primorac, HNS Competition Commission led by President Ante Vučemilović-Šimunović, Commission of Football Referees with President Anto Kulušić, HT First League Competition Commissioner Josip Brezni and HNS Security Commissioner Miroslav Marković:

1. It is obligatory to adhere to all decisions, measures and recommendations which he has prescribed and which will be prescribed by the Civil Protection Staff of the Republic of Croatia or other competent state institutions.

2. Considering the HNS competition calendar, all competitions under the HNS's jurisdiction shall continue with or without spectators.

3. Match organizers are obliged to fully respect and implement the measures of the Civil Protection Staff of the Republic of Croatia.

4. We emphasize the obligation of the organizers to obtain the consent of the County Civil Protection Headquarters and the competent Institute of Public Health regarding the fulfillment of the prescribed conditions for the organization of the match before the matches.

The Croatian Football Federation will continue to closely monitor the situation with the epidemic of the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and will, if necessary, determine new measures and issue new instructions, which will be notified to the football family and the public promptly.

In accordance with the recommendation of the Civil Protection Staff, the opinion of the County Institute of Public Health of Istria County and the decision of the Croatian Football Federation to continue the competition, Istra 1961 announced that its 27th and 28th round HNL games, scheduled on March 14 and 21, will be played without spectators.

On Saturday, March 14, Rijeka will visit Pula to play Istra, while a week later, Hajduk will visit Aldo Drosina Stadium.

"Both games will be played without the presence of spectators and there will be no ticket sales," the first-league team from Pula said.

The Istrian Institute of Public Health on Tuesday issued special recommendations to prevent the coronavirus epidemic, which, among other things, delays all outdoor and indoor gatherings, from children's events and birthdays, to sports, cultural, business and other events.

The Istra decision was only the first since Rijeka and Varazdin later came forward. Both have suspended ticket sales for their next home games.

Varazdin will host Dinamo on Sunday, March 15, and three days later, Rijeka will host Osijek in the Croatian Cup semi-finals. Both Varazdin and Rijeka have stopped selling tickets for those duels.

Lokomotiva will host Osijek at Kranjceviceva stadium on Friday from 6 pm.

'According to the published measures of the Civil Protection Headquarters of the Republic of Croatia, NK Lokomotiva, as the host of the match, will adhere to the maximum extent and implement all instructions, measures and recommendations regarding the organization of the match by the County Civil Protection Headquarters and the Institute of Public Health.

The maximum number of viewers will be 1,000.

NK Lokomotiva will provide checkpoints with disinfectants and urges viewers to refrain from the usual non-verbal communication that involves shaking hands and avoiding closer social contact.'

The club also urges fans with respiratory illness and/or fever (greater than 37.5 C) not to attend the match.

Tickets are purchased exclusively at the stadium ticket office on the day of the match, two hours before the start of the meeting (from 4:00 pm). 

Hajduk will play against Inter Zapresic at Poljud on Sunday at 3 pm as part of the 27th round. It is the first of two championship matches to be played in front of the empty stands because of the penalty that HNK Hajduk received for violations committed during the Hajduk - Dinamo match played on March 4.

To read more about sport in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page.

March 10, 2020 - In an interview with TMZ Sports, Stipe Miocic confirmed that he is very close to returning to the ring, after there has been much speculation of his retirement.

There has been a lot of talk in recent months that UFC Champion Stipe Miocic may be forced to retire due to an eye problem resulting from his last fight against Daniel Cormier. Recall that in the big rematch last summer, Miocic gained revenge and regained the title, though there were consequences, and he did have to undergo surgery.

Miocic has not been allowed to do any sparring in training for half a year to recover from his operation. However, in an interview with TMZ Sports, Stipe revealed that he is on the verge of returning to proper training in the gym and thus into the octagon for a trilogy fight against Daniel Cormier.

"The eye is actually really good. It's recovering and it's getting better every day. I'll be back in training," Stipe said, revealing when he could return to the ring.

"Probably in the summer. A lot of stuff has already booked until then, so I'll probably be back then."

He also confirmed that the UFC will decide his rival, and organization president Dana White has said several times that a trilogy match is on the horizon. It could be Daniel Cormier’s last fight of his career.

"He will lose again," Stipe said.

UFC 249 and 250 already have two major fights of the evening, three of which are for the title, so it makes sense to see Stipe the earliest at UFC 252 or even 253. UFC 251 is in Perth and takes place on June 6, 2020.

Thus, the Miocic and Cormier trilogy fight could be held on the night of July 11-12, at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

You can watch the video on TMZ here.

Source: Gol.hr

To read more about sport in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, March 10, 2020 - Presenting his defence in the Fimi Media trial on Tuesday, a former customs administration director and former treasurer of the Croatian Democratic Party (HDZ), Mladen Barišić claimed that everything he did was according to the party leader Ivo Sanader's instructions.

Barišić was presenting his defence in the trial against him for his role in the Fimi Media scandal in which money was siphoned from state institutions through the Fimi Media marketing agency.

"Everything I did as the party's treasurer was done in accordance and agreement with the party's leader. Ivo Sanader was authoritarian and did not allow any self-will and I did what I was instructed to do. I executed the tasks assigned obediently, and believed that I was working for the benefit of the party," Barišić said and added that all financial decisions could not be made by anyone but Sanader.

Barišić added that on one occasion in the presence of former HDZ officials Luka Bebić, Jadranka Kosor and Ivan Jarnjak, Sanader referred to Barišić as "his special officer and right hand man." The defendant told Zagreb County Court that he was surprised that certain individuals in the HDZ "who received extra money, for instance, some women who received allowances for clothing," were now accusing him.

The retrial of the case related to the siphoning of about 70 million kuna (almost €10 million) from state institutions and companies through Fimi Media, which came to be known as a byword for corruption in Croatian politics, was formally commented at the end of January.

From the very beginning Sanader has rejected all the accusations and has claimed that he is the victim of a trumped up political process that his successor Jadranka Kosor and the then chief state prosecutor, Mladen Bajić, launched against him.

Other defendants in addition to Barišić and who are also standing trial in this case, apart from Sanader, who was previously convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison, and the HDZ which was fined HRK 5 million, are former party chief accountant Branka Pavošević, and former party and government spokesman in Sanader's cabinet, Ratko Maček.

The owner of the Fimi Media agency, Nevenka Jurak, who was also a defendant in this case, passed away in November 2019 and the charges against her were suspended.

More news about the Sanader case can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, March 10, 2020 - Since the beginning of the year Bosnia and Herzegovina's border police have prevented more than 1,600 migrants from illegally entering the country from Serbia and Montenegro, the Dnevni Avaz daily reported on Tuesday.

By 8 March there were a total of 1,656 attempts of illegal entry recorded.

According to information from the county's border police, more than 1,300 people attempted to cross the border in the area of Zvornik in eastern Bosnia.

Most of the irregular migrants come for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

The border police have assessed that this is somewhat less pressure by migrants considering the winter period and colder weather however the authorities believe that that situation will change with the spring weather when the number of migrants attempting to cross the border and travel on to Western countries, could increase.

In 2019, the border police prevented a little more than 13,000 attempts of illegal entry into Bosnia and Herzegovina.

More news about the migrant crisis can be found in the Politics section.

ZAGREB, March 10, 2020 - Croatia's commodity exports in January 2020 totalled HRK 8.3 billion, up by 0.4% compared to January 2019, while the imports rose 1.3% to HRK 14 billion, according to provisional data provided by the national statistical office (DZS) on Tuesday.

As a result, the country's foreign trade deficit was HRK 5.7 billion, which is by 154.3 million kuna more than in January 2019.

The coverage of imports by exports went from 59.9% to 59.4%.

Croatia's exports to other EU member-states rose by 3.6% to over six billion kuna on the year.

On the other hand, exports to non-EU members fell 7.2% to HRK 2.3 billion.

The imports from EU members increased 1.3% to HRK 11.5 billion, and from non-EU members by 1.5% to HRK 2.6 billion.

Expressed in euros, Croatia's commodity exports in January 2020 totalled €1.1 billion, down 0.2% on the year, while imports went up 0.8% to €1.9 billion.

The foreign trade deficit was €765.7 million, as against €748.8 million in January 2019.

The latest data on exports and imports in the whole of 2019, show that Croatia's commodity exports in 2019 totalled HRK 114.2 billion, up 5.8% on the year, while imports reached HRK 184.3 billion, an increase of 4.6%.

More economic news can be found in the Business section.

Could a Slavonian revival be on the cards? While the region continues to undergo its signature hardships, some encouraging business news emerged out of Eastern Croatia last year...

When you think of Slavonia, you likely think of what was once the bread basket of the entire country having now been left to rot, proverbially of course. The overlooked Eastern region of Croatia once fed the country, but is now struggling with its main export being man power and human labour heading off to other EU countries to try their luck at better lives and more economic stability.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 9th of March, 2020, according to data published by the gradonacelnik.hr (mayor.hr) portal, 15,445 new companies were opened in Croatia last year, 1178 more than were opened back in 2018.

However, 10,814 enterprises were closed or deleted from the court registers, 623 more than in the previous year. This is evidenced by data from the court registry of the Ministry of Justice, which confirms the continuation of positive trends and the growth of entrepreneurship in Croatia, which, including 2017, saw the opening of more than 43,000 new companies and the closure of just over 33,000, according to Glas Slavonije.

Data on the number of companies opened has been summarised in the registers of the commercial courts at which they were registered, and the figures are such that five out of nine commercial courts in Croatia (noting that the one in Dubrovnik started operating only in September last year) show positive trends, ie growth in the number of companies opened.

The largest increase over the previous year was recorded by the Commercial Court in Bjelovar, which has taken numerous praiseworthy steps in being more transparent and citizen-friendly, followed by TS Osijek. Could this mean the beginning, albeit humble, of a desperately needed Slavonian revival?

The Osijek Commercial Court covers the territories of the Osijek-Baranja and Vukovar-Srijem counties, and has a permanent service in Slavonski Brod with its jurisdiction, and for such a large territorial area, it should not be surprising that such a large increase in companies being opened.

However, the value of the figure 1467 should not be diminished at all, as it is almost a third (30.6 percent) more than the year before. In the two previous years, more than a thousand companies were founded. Much has been written about this kind of awakening of the local Slavonian economy, a Slavonian revival if you will, and the total income of the Osijek-Baranja economy for the last year stood at 28.5 billion kuna, which is an increase of 2.2 billion in just one year.

The incentive role of local self-government units must not be neglected. In the past two years, Osijek-Baranja County has doubled its support for entrepreneurship, from 4.2 million to 8.6 million kuna. In addition, the County participates in subsidising interest rates for loans to entrepreneurs, proactively participating in everything that, according to Mayor Ivan Anusic, will increase the competitiveness of local companies, but also create new businesses and companies, new values, professions and most importantly of all - new jobs.

Similar trends exist in the City of Osijek itself, where an encouraging 427 companies were founded last year. Entrepreneurship grants from the City of Osijek budget have increased to almost seven million kuna now, and Mayor Ivan Vrkic points out that there have been 2.5 thousand new employees in Osijek. The model in which the City of Osijek subsidises the cost of two gross salaries for each new employee is one excellent example. Conditions, however, are local-patriotic - the company must be based in Osijek, and the (newly) employed person must be an Osijek resident.

However, the biggest boom in entrepreneurship took place in Bjelovar. Last year, 654 new companies were registered with the Commercial Court, which is a massive 71.65 percent more than the year before, and 93.49 percent more than in 2017, when Dario Hrebak took over the management of the city and launched a series of measures to encourage entrepreneurship, about which we have written extensively.

''We want to show that one can succeed if one thinks of the common good rather than the individual good. The real indicators of this work, which I expect to see, are yet to be seen and that will take a few years. It's important that we've shown that this model of managing public resources can be changed and that we've shown that its redesign is very possible,'' Bjelovar Mayor Dario Hrebak said for gradonacelnik.hr.

After Bjelovar and Osijek and away from the deeply desired Slavonian revival, the Dalmatian city of Zadar recorded the highest growth. Mayor Branko Dukic pointed out that this is the fourth consecutive year in which all economic indicators have been continuously and significantly growing, and that Zadar today is a city of dynamic and agile entrepreneurship.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business page for much more.

If you've ever spent any time whatsoever in the City of Dubrovnik or in Croatia's southernmost county of Dubrovnik-Neretva, you'll more than likely have shopped once or twice in a local Pemo. Pemo is one of the less glamorous symbols of southern Dalmatia and supplies local residents and foreign tourists alike.

While Pemo's products are most commonly sold out (and quickly) to foreign visitors stocking up their fridges in their rented accommodation, the stores have a long history in southern Dalmatia and employ several hundred employees.

As Novac writes on the 10th of March, 2020, the equally well known Studenac chain is taking over Dubrovnik's Pemo in order to further strengthen its position along the Croatian coast, according to the retail chain.

Pemo has 35 stores and approximately 370 employees in Dubrovnik-Neretva County in the extreme south of Dalmatia, and after the Competition Agency (AZTN) approves the announced Studenac takeover and fulfills all agreed terms on both sides, Studenac will acquire a 100 percent stake in Pemo d.o.o.

''Over the past year and a half, we've developed a very attractive format of trade in Dubrovnik, which primarily meets the needs of local customers, but also meets high standards of tourist demand. Accordingly, our results in this area are above average, which is especially important for this transaction as we're going to become a significant player in the region and strengthen our leadership position on the Croatian coast,'' stated Michal Senczuk, CEO of Studenac.

Lovorko Milosevic, founder of the much loved and long standing Pemo, thanked regular customers of the Dubrovnik retail chain for their loyalty to the store, stating that he believed that those same faithful customers will continue to shop there and show the same support in the future.

For more on business events and economic activity in Croatia, follow our dedicated business page.

The selling of Croatian houses for a mere one kuna is one of the many demographic measures taken by municipal authorities in an attempt to retain and attract young families to their area.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 10th of March, 2020, in Podravina, a real hit was the possibility for people to to buy real estate and construction land for the much more than acceptable price tag of a mere one kuna, HRT reports.

Inquiries have been coming from all Croatian regions, as well as from neighbouring countries. The Croatian demographic picture is bleak, and with more and more of the working population leaving for lives elsewhere in the EU, the move might just be enough to keep hold of a few who remain as yet undecided.

After visiting about twenty properties in the municipality of Legrad, the picturesque village at the mouth of the Mura along the Drava river, the Ros family decided that the house in Antolovac would be their new home. They bought it today for just one kuna.

''We chose this house, the house is in really good condition. We also visited the surrounding villages, but this is the best place for us,'' said Osman Ros.

An acquaintance found out about this possibility. The condition is that those purchasing the property must be under forty years of age and that they will remain in Legrad for the next fifteen years. For the Strmecki family with seven children and an eighth on the way, the opportunity to purchase Croatian houses for such a low price is not to be missed.

''Our goal is as it is because we have both girls and the boys, and it's important for them to have their own rooms,'' says Valentina Strmecki.

In the attic of one of the houses, Viktor Holcman will get his room. It was bought by his mother thanks to a municipal grant of almost 30,000 kuna.

''The municipality has already provided assistance. A request was made, the request was granted within two months. The money was there soon enough and everything was in full swing,'' says Paula Holcman.

In addition to Croatian houses owned by the municipality of Legrad, construction land can be purchased for one kuna. The municipality subsidises the purchase of houses in its area for natural persons with up to a maximum of 35,000 kuna, or provides 25,000 kuna for the renovation of existing ones. They are subsidising the kindergarten, a primary school has been built, and nursery is being built. But that's not all.

''We have the lowest unemployment rate in the county, given the proximity of the larger areas of Koprivnica, Ludbreg, Prelog. We have virtually no unemployed people,'' says Legrad Mayor Ivan Sabolic.

As stated, the possibility to purchase Croatian houses for such little money has attracted numerous enquiries from all over Croatia and even from neighbouring Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more.