ZAGREB, February 18, 2018 – In an interview with Hina, Minister of Construction and Physical Planning Predrag Štromar of the Croatian People’s Party (HNS) discussed relations with their senior coalition partner, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), announcing that the HNS had assembled a team of experts to work on and propose a distress bill, that 2018 and 2019 would be years of reform, and that this government would continue to work on reforms until the end of its term.
As deputy prime minister, are you satisfied with your relationship with the senior coalition partner, are your proposals being taken into account sufficiently?
I think that we’ve done something exceptionally good for the country. With the HNS joining the government, we have ensured stability, and stability is very much needed for the economy and other aspects of life in the country. Only with stability can we do what we have to in Croatia. We didn’t have that stability two years ago. Now we do and we need to make use of it. And in addition to economic processes that need to continue, we need to adopt decisions, new laws and implement reforms. Specifically, we are very pleased that the HNS has taken charge of the education reform because we’ve been talking about that for 20 years but nothing was done. We’ve now done more in the past six months than had been in the past 10 years as far as taking steps in the education reform is concerned. The plan we have gives a precise timeframe of steps that will be taken as part of this project.
Everyone expects reforms from this government and in that regard the HNS is working on a new distress bill to resolve the problem of such a large number of citizens and companies under distress?
The HNS is very interested in that. We in the HNS have also assembled a team of experts and will recommend a new distress bill. Then we will sit down with Justice Minister Dražen Bošnjaković’s (HDZ) task force and see what parts of the law are better and applicable and then together we will prepare that bill. The new distress bill has to be good. It has to reduce the number of procedures for suspension of distress orders and if someone wishes to issue a distress order, it must not be unreasonably expensive so that a principal debt of 100 kuna quickly increases to a thousand kuna without interest, but only including the cost of the actual proceedings. That certainly is not good and has to change.
Critics are saying that Lex Agrokor was adopted quickly and that the distress law might be too.
Yes, there are some deficiencies in that law. It was necessary to adopt it quickly otherwise the entire economy would have come to a halt. We certainly would have had a fall in gross domestic product had that law not been adopted but now it needs to be enforced and a settlement reached as soon as possible, most certainly within the deadline of 10 July, and sooner if possible.
Is the leader of your party, Ivan Vrdoljak, considering entering the government?
He won’t be joining the government. He will be the leader of the HNS. We have a lot of work to do and I think that leading a party is an important job.
