ZAGREB, March 16, 2019 – President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović will call the European elections by the March 26 deadline, Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković said in Split on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting of the HDZ party’s Split County branch, Jandroković said after the elections were called, slates would be submitted and confirmed, followed by campaigning and the vote on May 26.
Asked what results the ruling HDZ, of which he is secretary-general, expected in the EP elections and Croatia’s presidential election later this year, he said recent local elections in Lika County “have shown the HDZ is convincingly the strongest party, regardless of attempts to downplay our success.”
He said the HDZ was the only party which could win 30% of the vote, that every other party had serious internal problems and that the upcoming elections would reflect that. He estimated that the HDZ would score an excellent result in the EP elections and a convincing victory.
Social Democratic Party (SDP) president Davor Bernardić said on Saturday the SDP was seeing to it that Croatian citizens were equal in the European Union and not “second class citizens” and that, for that to be happen, “we must have representatives of Croatian interests in Brussels, not representatives of Brussels’ interests in Croatia.”
Presenting the SDP’s candidates for European Parliament elections in Osijek, Bernardić said the point of being in politics was to provide everyone in Croatia with equal chances and equal rights to succeed.
He said the incumbent SDP MEPs had demonstrated how one should fight for “the interests of our citizens in Brussels.”
He said the SDP wanted to ensure equal treatment for Croatian farmers as well as equal hospitality and tourism taxes, which he said were higher in Croatia than in its Mediterranean competitors. He warned that salaries in Croatia were three times lower than elsewhere in the EU.
SDP MEP Biljana Borzan, who is running for reelection, said consumers’ problems concerned all EU citizens and that MEPs had the duty to warn about every injustice. “The Social Democrats always were and will be the voice of Croatian citizens in the EU.”
She said it was important to motivate people to vote in the EP elections due in May as two-thirds of regulations applying to all Croatian citizens were adopted in the EU.
More news on the European elections can be found in the Politics section.
