With full membership to the European Union, Croatia has gained the right but also the obligation to participate in decision-making on legislative changes and in an effort to better represent the interests of Croatia's economy in that process, economists have access to numerous professional associations and lobby groups, the conference "Representing the interest of the Croatian economy at the European level" heard in Zagreb on Tuesday.
The conference was organised by the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) and the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK), whose associations are members of a total of 33 international and European umbrella organisations, and the HGK is a member of four EU networks, the chamber's vice president, Vesna Trnokop Tanta, recalled at the conference.
The HGK's trade association is a member of the European trade lobby. Croatian beer, malt and hop producers are members of the Brewers of Europe association, the European Brewery Convention and the European Foundation for Alcohol Research, while the association of agriculture and support industries is part of the European Flour Millers Association.
All these organisations advocate the interests of all national members and provide them with important information for their particular industrial branch or individual companies so that they can influence decision making at the EU level.
Trnokop Tanta pointed out that around 75% of all legislative decisions in the EU relate to the economy which further highlights the need to participate or at least impact in shaping them.
The HGK is also a member of the European Centre for Public Affairs, whose Executive Director Maria Laptev, a lobby professor, said that it was a fallacy to think that such a small country with such few votes in European bodies like Croatia could have any greater impact on decision making.
The European system is set up so that each country, regardless of its size or number of votes, can tip the scales as a large number of important decisions are adopted by consensus or with at least half the countries in favour to adopt a decision.
In order for a national economy, industrial branch or individual company to be protected or to incorporate its interests in any decision, Laptev stressed, the best thing is to primarily have a joint attitude within the national professional association or community. Long term experience in lobbying in the EU tells us, even though it seems logical to do so, that this attitude then need not be presented to the 'main man' within the committee that will make the decision. The first step needs to be to present the idea to the European association to adopt that point of view and then to present it to the decision maker or to find other groups that support the idea and then to jointly present it, she explained.
