It has started to be talked about in the corridors that there is a man in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs who is ‘pushing economic diplomacy and exports’.
Of course, this immediately interested Lider, and it didn’t take long to detect that it is Joško Klisović, the deputy minister. Although he has spent most of his career in various positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in diplomacy, one ‘excursion’ into the real sector (in 2009 he was the Secretary General of Atlantic Group) was enough for him to become sensitized to business problems.
• When will Croatian exporters finally receive economic diplomacy that will be in the full sense of the word?
– There has always been economic diplomacy in some form in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until now, it has been more improvisation on individual issues and sporadic requests from some companies than systematic work with a clear vision and concept. Its actions have not been based on the real needs of the Croatian economy and the demands of international markets. Now we are trying to offer a new vision of action, to build an effective system, while activating and optimizing all available instruments and establishing new methods of work. Of course, we will also set clear priorities to focus on. They will arise from the analysis of the needs of the Croatian economy, the demands and the state of affairs in international markets, as well as our diplomatic capacities. We want to build a system that works in practice, not to offer some new theoretical model that is only logically and professionally defensible, but does not achieve any or meager results on the ground. The depth and urgency of the system change is certainly influenced by the currently unsatisfactory state of our economy. I believe that every segment of the Government, including the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, should contribute to its prompt recovery.
