What can Croatia learn from Estonia’s actions?
Citizens of most European countries believe that they’re raising their living standards to higher and higher levels. The exceptions are the Croats, the Greeks and the Cypriots.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 14th of April, 2018, the Republic of Croatia, along with Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Spain, recorded a decline in quality of life. But only in Croatia, Greece and Cyprus has the quality of living diminished in all the indicators measured by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) from Dublin, Ireland. The Foundation is a European Union agency whose role is to provide key stakeholders in the area of social policy with information, knowledge and advice from comparative research.
The Foundation has been conducting the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) for more than a year. Croatia was first included in the EQLS 2007, and it’s a little surprising that despite the issues caused by the economic crisis, the level of quality assessment for 2012 was relatively high, probably due to the anticipations and expectations of early European Union accession.
While in Nothern European countries like Sweden and Denmark more than 80 percent of citizens believe in a better future, only about 55 percent of Croats share such optimism. This is somewhat better than in Portugal and Slovakia, and much better than in Italy and Greece, where just 47% and 37% of respondents are as optimistic.
According to the results about the standard of living, only Bulgaria and Greece are behind Croatia. Croatian citizens, along with French, Greek, Irish, Italian, Slovakian and Spanish citizens, say that in 2016 they had even more difficulties in meeting their various needs and requirements than they had before the crisis back in 2007.
There are five indicators of material deprivation: 1. Citizens cannot afford adequate heating during the coldest months; 2. they cannot afford a week’s holiday; 3. They cannot afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every other day; 4. They aren’t in a position to settle unexpected financial expenses; 5. They’re late with other payments
According to these indicators, the standard of living has improved the most in Estonia. Only in five countries – Croatia, Austria, Greece, Italy and, rather surprisingly, Luxembourg, did the situation appear to have worsened, while in six countries there was no real change to report.
In additon, in both Croatia and Greece, there has been an increase in the difficulty of returning non-formal loans from friends and relatives.
According to this survey, almost a third of Croatian citizens (31 percent) have difficulties with payment of rent or mortages and other such things of a similar nature, and approximately one quarter are late with their payment of smaller costs such as telephone bills.
