Government Absurdistan – The Promised Land Without Logic and Reason

The last few months before Croatia’s entry into the EU will be remembered for a series of irrational situations that marked the economic everyday life in Croatia.

Inspired by them, more and more bloggers and social media users are using the term Absurdistan as a new synonym for Croatia. If you didn’t know, this term is used to describe a country where absurdity has become the norm, especially in government bodies and authorities. It is a term that was once used for some former states of the Soviet Union, which today’s situation in Croatia irresistibly resembles. In this sense, I would particularly highlight two situations that have caused astonishment or at least confusion among entrepreneurs and the aware part of the Croatian population.

Who is responsible for Srđ The first situation, which certainly positively marked this period, is the failure of the referendum to demolish the investment at Srđ. To summarize. An investor who knows the environment well invests 100 million euros over several years buying private construction land, but when he wants to realize the investment, he finds a dozen destructive individuals trying to convince the local population to stop the investment through a referendum. Fortunately, the majority of the historically wise Dubrovnik population did not fall for this, so the referendum failed. The absurdity in this situation is that the Government, with its uneven and partial support for the investment at Srđ, left room for retreat in case the referendum succeeded (except for Minister Lorencin, who has experienced similar situations multiple times in Istria). I wonder, if the primary goal of the Government is to increase investments that are crucial for the recovery of the economy, why then did it not unreservedly support this investment and explicitly stand on the side of the investors? Fortunately, the investment at Srđ is starting soon. However, such a Government stance and restraint in supporting investors have made potential investors suspicious. Recently, in a casual conversation with serious investors considering investing in Croatia, I heard a comment from one of them: ‘If Maja (Ruth Frenkel) – who is very well informed, knows the environment, is locally networked, and has her own money – had so many problems and inconveniences, what awaits us in the realization of the investment.’

Who pays the pilots and flight attendants The second absurdity is the gap that the Government continuously creates between the public administration and the private sector. On one hand, the Government assures us that it has facilitated business for the economy, while entrepreneurs, domestic and foreign investors, ambassadors, associations, and experts warn that it has never been so administratively demanding, unpredictable, risky, and expensive to invest and do business in Croatia. Then it is accidentally discovered that there are more than 500 parafiscal levies that the Ministry of Finance was unaware of, and then other state administration institutions are blamed as if they are not part of the Government’s mechanism or do not receive money from the budget. Also, contrary to the promises made at the beginning of the mandate regarding the plan to reduce the number of civil servants, in recent months we have only found job advertisements for new employment in ministries and other state administrations. At the same time, private companies are forced to lay off tens of thousands of workers to survive.
In the end, I am not sure if the average Croatian citizen, worker, or pensioner understands that the budget, from which the state’s expenses are covered, must be filled from somewhere. This budget is largely filled by the 42% of companies that operate at a profit. From their taxes, salaries are paid to civil servants and employees of several hundred state agencies, pensions, state loans, etc. Here I recognize another absurdity. These 56,363 profitable companies must also earn for the salaries of flight attendants and pilots of Croatia Airlines, and these same flight attendants and pilots insist on retaining all previous rights, even at the cost of selling off the assets of Croatia Airlines, which taxpayers have subsidized for years.
Finally, every inquiry, testimony, or affirmative criticism about these situations is denied by the Government, assuring us that it is not true. This reminds me of scenes in movies when a woman catches her husband with another woman in bed in flagrante delicto, and he gets up and says: ‘Dear, it’s not what you think, let me explain!’