The salary increase has not been well communicated to the public

The Deputy Prime Minister for Internal, Foreign and European Affairs Neven Mimica stated today that he believes there are more reasons to believe that Slovenia will ratify the Croatian accession agreement so that Croatia can become a member of the EU on July 1 of this year, than to doubt it.

– We still have time, not much, but we have it, to try to fully argue everything related to the completion of the ratification process in Slovenia. This means to argue either bilaterally or within European frameworks that Croatia has practically done everything necessary and that the arguments that would potentially go against the completion of ratification in Slovenia do not hold – emphasized Mimica. Reminding that seven more countries need to ratify the Croatian accession agreement, Mimica said that Slovenia has ‘the strongest and most concrete demands or the most concrete levers that can influence the dynamics and process of the Croatian accession agreement, no matter how much the arguments and reasons are unrelated to the content of European legislation and the content of obligations that Croatia has accepted in its accession agreement.’

Recalling the Croatian path to the EU, Mimica said that many things happened differently from what we planned, adding, however, that today we have definitely come to the very doors of the EU that are not locked. Mimica also commented on the strong public reaction to the recent salary increase for some state officials in the Weekly Interview of Croatian Radio, stating that he accepts that this topic may not have been communicated to the public in the right way.

– This is not a general salary increase for state officials or an increase in their number but even a reduction, but we did not explain the big picture of the situation in the agencies to the public in the right way – he said, reiterating that it is about a salary increase for about ten senior officials in health and pension insurance and employment agencies, and not a general salary increase for state officials. 

– This is the third and final act of a larger action to regulate the situation in all agencies. We divided the agencies into three groups – small, large, and medium – and for each of these groups, we regulated salaries in a way that we generally lowered them – said Mimica, adding, however, that for the three or four largest, with the largest operations and which perform very responsible jobs, it was said that the salaries of their managers must be at least at the level of deputy ministers.

When viewed as a whole, he asserted, expenditures for salaries in the agencies will be significantly lower than before. He also told citizens that this year will be difficult as we will reach the bottom and the lowest points of the economic decline, but also a year in which it will begin to be felt that we have managed to bounce back upwards and improve the situation after touching the ground.