Croatia has stepped up preparations for full membership of the European Union and once it joins the bloc it will be able to draw much more money from its structural and cohesion funds than it does now in the pre-accession phase, the Croatian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Regional Development and European Union Funds, Branko Grcic, said after meeting with EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele in Brussels on Monday.
"In the pre-accession period Croatia has had about 150 million euros at its disposal annually, and now we are entering a period when we will have access to over a billion euros annually. This shows how much work Croatia is facing in preparations for drawing those funds and how much more we must work to increase our absorption capacity," said Grcic, describing his meeting with Fuele as very successful.
Grcic said that his ministry had set up special units to coordinate preparations for the use of EU funds and that a coordinating body had been set up at government level to monitor the whole process. "We're now going to increase the capacity in each ministry and all other institutions that will play a key role in the use of EU funding in the future," he added.
The meeting also focused on the so-called Sarajevo Process, namely on organising a donor conference in Sarajevo later in April to raise funds for refugee housing in the region. The project is worth over 500 million euros and would include funding from the national budgets of four countries in the region.
"That would largely solve a burning problem in our region, the consequences of the wars of 15 and 20 years ago," Grcic said.
