Participating in the discussion on support for the development of entrepreneurship among youth, when mentioning the establishment of an entrepreneurial incubator, Zlatko Kuzman, president of the County Chamber of Karlovac, could not hide his frustration at the difference between declarative support for the development of entrepreneurship and the real one, illustrating this with the example of the Karlovac Chamber.
In the ‘software’ part, which he refers to as the advisory program of the Chamber, more than 1,700 entrepreneurs have passed through, however, in the ‘hardware’ part, as Kuzman calls the functional equipping of the Chamber’s facility for the formation of the Development Center, contracted with the City and the County and in which 3.5 million kuna has already been spent, the matter has stalled on the previously planned model of co-financing with EU funds.
– To complete the space for about 20 entrepreneurs on 1,400 square meters, we would need, according to the EU funding procedure, another ten million kuna. But some ‘genius’ in this country has imagined that the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, according to the Law on the Promotion of Entrepreneurial Infrastructure, is not an ‘entrepreneurial support institution’! Accordingly, we cannot apply for our project, which meets all other conditions for funding from EU funds. We do not want to spend Croatian money if we could and should receive money from the EU for it, but as long as such thinking persists or we are still classified in the category of support institutions, the project will remain stalled – said Kuzman.
It is also interesting that the free reading of the mentioned law was enabled by the Croatian Chamber of Commerce.
