"The Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund finances key projects aimed at protecting and improving the environment and increasing energy efficiency and production of energy from renewable sources. The position of Director of the Fund is an extremely responsible one and it is very important that the Director is appointed in a transparent way. An attempt to appoint a person who does not meet the requirements for this position by using political pressure is unacceptable," the statement said.

The organisation said that this attempt to make a political appointment was even worse than the one over which Mirela Holy had resigned as Environment Minister.

"She tried to prevent the dismissal of a secretary at HZ (rail company), while Cacic used threats and unacceptable pressure to appoint an unqualified member of his party to a very responsible position where he would have at his disposal a budget of about a billion kuna annually," the Green Forum said, warning that unless the government replaced Cacic it would "lose all credibility".