Five smaller towns and one district whose development was halted by war will have over a billion Kuna from EU funds to finance infrastructure and open new jobs
“Beli Manastir, Benkovac, Knin, Petrinja, Vukovar and Darda district have the opportunity to participate as pilot areas in a integrated regeneration programme. Funds from this project will secure the reduction of social inequality, exclusion and poverty, but also improvement of infrastructure, increase of living conditions and active participation of area residents in economic life,” said Minister of Regional Development and EU Funds Tomislav Tolušić while presenting the project in Knin, as Poslovni Dnevnik reported on July 18, 2016.
These towns and district were chosen based on the criteria of lowest development index compared to the Croatian average, and as 100 million Euro is allocated from the European Fund for Regional Development and 20 million from the European Social Fund, they will be able to support almost all projects from water system development, roads or street-lights to supporting businesses and non-governmental organisations, cultural heritage and ecology.
The pre-condition for receiving funds is the completion of an area analysis of a local administrative unit, followed by an intervention plan based on which activities will be chosen. So far only the town of Knin has a finished area analysis while for other units this document will be complete by the end of July. Knin is also near the end of their intervention plan to the Ministry predicts they will begin using the funds soon.
