As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, after the Central Bureau of Statistics published the first official data from the Croatian 2021 Census, according to which 3,888,529 people live in the Republic of Croatia, the first reactions have arrived.
“We expected the population to be less than 3.8 million,” said Croatian demographer Stjepan Sterc, who was a recent guest on N1’s live studio. He added that little was said about Croatia losing almost 400,000 inhabitants.
“This is an incredible catastrophe for Croatia, to lose 400,000 inhabitants and that there is no reaction to it or awareness of it,” added demographer Sterc.
Member of Parliament Katarina Peovic also commented on the results of the Croatian 2021 Census as a guest in N1’s studio.
“It must be said openly that people have been expelled from the country. The birth rate is low everywhere, but in Croatia there are measures that force young people to leave the country. For the first time, we have a situation where young people have worse living conditions than their parents did. Young people are creating a surplus of the population, they’re deemed unnecessary and this country does not intend to use them. We have a million unemployed people, no country can prosper if there are so many people who are deemed to be unnecessary to it,” said Peovic.
“The devastating results of the Croatian 2021 Census are a defeat to all those who led this country first and foremost, for the last ten years! But what’s even more of a concern is their deep misunderstanding of the problem they’re trying to solve with the measure Choose Croatia – which would pay people to return here,” said the head of Nova ljevica (New Left), Ivana Kekin, on Twitter.
The prefect of Vukovar-Srijem County, Damir Dekanic, commented on the Croatian 2021 Census results and the fact that his county has almost 20 percent fewer people than it did before 2011. “I have to admit that this result is, unfortunately, expected,” said Dekanic, adding that a large number of people from the county he’s in charge of left with Croatia’s entry into the European Union (EU).
“HDZ is not in power in the Czech Republic, so the results of the population in the Czech Republic are because people have moved out of the country when it joined the European Union,” he said in response to people criticising HDZ as the results came in.
“The general climate of return should be created first, just as the general climate of departure was created in the media,” Dekanic added.
Rajko Ostojic considers the results of the Croatian 2021 Census utterly catastrophic. “Corruption, crime and clientelism are the main reasons why people are leaving Croatia,” said Ostojic as a guest on the N1 live studio.
For more, check out our dedicated politics section.
