As Regional Express writes on the 4th of June, 2020, Croatian Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli said he was in talks with Austria about opening the borders. He added that there are holidays in Austria and that everyone is working to try to protect their respective economies.
“I fully understand them. Some people must have also understood us when we said that we’re opening our borders for ten countries, but I think that this will crystallise and be resolved at the European level by June the 15th,” Gari Cappelli said.
When asked if hotels are allowed to receive workers’ benefits and remain closed from July and not operate, he replied that “this is a good question and it’s right [to assume] that it wouldn’t be fair, but we also need to understand that if hoteliers have no traffic or reservations, they’re not to blame for it. There are no talks with people in the tourism industry who are allegedly refining their invoices/bills in order to get state aid, but that needs to be checked,” the minister said.
When asked to comment on Finance Minister Zdravko Maric’s announcement that he would go through those in the hospitality and tourism industry who are refining and ‘preparing’ their bills and invoices in order to receive state aid with a fine tooth comb, Gari Cappelli replied on the eve of the government session that “we know how to deal with them, from the punishment to everything that is required to be done [in such cases] in accordance with the law,”
“With those who aren’t even issuing invoices, there’s no conversation. Everything else, for small things that still need to be done in these facilities, epidemiological [factors to take into consideration] and other things, they should be warned to do it all as soon as possible, and as for amounts and the number of invoices, that should be seen, because it’s very difficult to compare last year with this one,” Gari Cappelli said.
He believes that the total information on issued invoices and amounts includes hoteliers with their issued invoices, who have not worked since March this year, and that, as he says, is something one should be aware of when talking about how many more or how many less invoices have been issued and their amounts, because surely the amounts are higher when hotel accommodation, for example, is included.
Asked if he was suspicious of the bills being issued in the tourism and hospitality sector, he added that everything still needed to be seen.
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