ZAGREB, February 26, 2019 – Matija Posavec, who heads the Croatian People’s Party (HNS) slate for the European Parliament elections, said on Tuesday his goal was for Croatia to be more functioning as a European Union member state than it is now, and that the HNS would push for “more European values to enter Croatia.”
“With regard to the average pay, we want as many of our citizens as possible to have an average pay above 7,000 kuna. That’s the only economic and population reform which can stop emigration,” Posavec told reporters in Osijek.
He said Croatia was not absorbing European funds well because it had contracted only 62% and paid out only 26% of the funds available in the 2014-20 period.
He said there had not been much talk in the Croatian political sphere about a European Commission recommendation and law stating that small and medium enterprises must be protected. He pushed for protecting domestic farm products, saying Croatia imports two billion euro worth of food annually.
“If only one percent of that was invested in domestic production, it would be a 20 million euro investment annually in family farms and family SMEs,” Posavec said, adding that European values must reach every corner of Croatia because of unbalanced development.
More news on the European Parliament elections can be found in the Politics section.
