Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Monday that no one can be pleased with the population decrease but it was not unexpected, stressing that the government will do everything to mitigate the negative trends and improve the positive ones and noting that demographic issues go beyond the framework of one government.

After presenting the bill to adopt the euro as legal tender in Croatia, the prime minister was asked by the press to comment on the 2021 population census, which shows that Croatia has 396,000 fewer residents than ten years ago.

“Naturally, these results are not good, no one can be pleased with them, but at the same time when observing broader trends, they were not unexpected and can be explained quite easily,” said Plenkovic.

He first warned of the structure of the 396,000 fewer people, saying that the difference between births and deaths is 165,000 while the remaining 230,000 refers to 110,000 registered and 120,000 unregistered emigrants.

Referring to the negative natural increase, Plenkovic noted that this process has been ongoing for 70 years, recalling that in 1948, 95,000 children were born annually, while their number declined by 60,000 to 35,000 in 2021.

In reference to the number of emigrants, he recalled the fact that this has resulted from Croatia’s accession to the EU as one of the fundamental freedoms in the EU is free movement of workers.

“Prior to 2013 you could emigrate to an EU country only if you met one of two criteria – obtaining a work permit or being part of some sort of quota,” Plenkovic said.

“Now in 2022, in the ninth year of EU membership and ahead of entering the Schengen area and euro area, we are lifting our economy in terms of the average level of development within the EU and in terms of economic growth. We have the best credit rating ever, wages are increasing and by investing and using EU membership we are taking Croatia forward,” he added.

The prime minister recalled that, unlike Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, which started ten years earlier, it was only in 2000 that Croatia started using EU funds and “catching up” will still take this entire decade, in which Croatia has €25 billion at its disposal.

He noted several government measures directed at improving the framework to help young families have more children but warned that is not “just an economic, financial or political issue,” but also a matter of culture.

“That relates to the way of life we have today and it is not the same as in the 1950s or in the third decade of this century. Simply, the culture of life is different,” he claimed.

The government will do all it can to relieve the negative trends and improve the positive ones. “However, that is an issue that is much broader than the framework of one government or one  policy,” he assessed.

Unfortunately, the data are as they are but many countries in Western Europe have negative natural increases and are compensating them with immigration, he added.

“We still are not in a situation where Croatia would need to compensate these trends with immigration. When you look at the largest number of people being born in many Western countries, when you observe children’s origin, then you will see that many of them are the children of immigrant. These are all the facts that need to be put on the cards before any justification is made,” the prime minister said.