The European Parliament has shifted to the right. The Croatian Parliament has been there for a long time, and after the last elections, it has shifted even further. And here all (accidental) similarity ends. Because European centrists/conservatives want to deal with the economy instead of ‘genderology’, aware that the EU has lost both competitiveness and direction.
Croatian representatives, not just those on the right, want to deal with… well, it is still early to specify. They are probably also cushioned by a GDP that is soaring, buoyed by EU money and personal consumption, so there is no reason to focus on the economy. If we summarize the pre-election noise, the essence of the economic topics of our representatives revolved around taxes. They are both their strategy and tactics and executive operation. The obsession with taxes has lasted more or less practically since independence, but to this day, no one has learned that for entrepreneurs, the stability and long-term ‘fixity’ of tax rules are significantly more important than the height of the rate. However, the central point for the DP will be demographics, with a focus on South America and the return of emigrated Croats who have established generational roots there, with mostly poor knowledge of English and no knowledge of Croatian. Croats, we know, speak Spanish poorly. But perhaps this is precisely the opportunity for the rise of the ‘language voucher’ industry. It is also not entirely clear whether they understand that South American Croats cannot be a demographic or labor market solution. Left-oriented parties, along with progressive taxation, intend to deal with (also) affordable housing as a response to emigration.
Work experience is unimportant
How much all party spectrums will actually deal with the essence of the economy and how much they will be spokespersons for entrepreneurs and the real sector could also be read from their resumes, more precisely from the fact of how many of them come from entrepreneurial and/or managerial backgrounds. The task is technically not easy to accomplish, as there is no longer a practice on the parliamentary website to include work experience in the resumes of representatives, apart from data on birth, completed education level, and parliamentary tasks. Malicious observers could casually conclude that this is obviously unimportant for exercising legislative power. What is significantly more visible is the fact that almost 15 percent of all elected representatives are mayors, and a third of all county heads have also entered Parliament (who simultaneously cannot be representatives, so they were forced to choose the comfort of a chair). For mayors and their deputies, it could be argued that they have managerial skills and even an ear for the struggles of entrepreneurs. Some are, moreover, very engaged in entrepreneurial topics, such as Dario Hrebak, the mayor of Bjelovar, or Dario Zurovec, the mayor of Sveta Nedelja, which last year defended the title of the best medium-sized city for the economy.
To more easily draw a conclusion about the status of the economy and entrepreneurs in the new composition of Parliament, we sent an inquiry about the work experience of their members to the clubs of representatives of the parties that won the most mandates. No one even flinched at the inquiry. Malicious observers could again casually conclude that economic topics and dilemmas have not even registered with them. Thus concludes the majority of Lider’s interlocutors.
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