Race Against Time: Can Croatia Utilize EU Billions?

Only three percent, or 228 million euros, has been paid to Croatia so far from the new perspective funds 2021-2027, placing us at the lowest position on the EU country ranking by this indicator. At the end of March this year, we were the fourth worst, but we have since been overtaken by Hungary, Spain, and Portugal.

– Given the dynamics of the announcement of tenders, this is not much of a surprise. This particularly applies to tenders aimed at entrepreneurship, of which there have been quite few or almost none in the last year, and even then they were mostly from the NPOO, not from the regular financial perspective – commented Davor Nikolić, co-founder and director of Omnia Solutions, who recently published the aforementioned data on LinkedIn.

The Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds is not worried about this data as they say that member states have consumed 4 percent of pre-financing and 2 percent of interim payments from the total available funds, while Croatia has so far consumed exclusively pre-financing (amounting to 3% of the total allocation from cohesion funds), like 7 other member states.

– Additionally, the mentioned graph does not compare the total available funds by country, but only the percentage of realized financing in relation to the total allocation, so the Netherlands is first with 14 percent of pre-financing from a total allocation of 1.5 billion euros (thus, pre-financing amounts to 211.6 million euros), while Croatia has 8.7 billion available from cohesion funds (thus, 3% of pre-financing amounts to 228 million euros) – stated the Ministry, which evidently believes that absolute figures are more important for comparison than percentages.

The Ministry also believes that for a complete picture of the dynamics of implementation 2021-2027, it is necessary to look at other categories, which they consider more relevant at this moment of implementing the current financial perspective (Finances implemented, categories ‘Decided’ and ‘Spent’).

– According to data from November 14, 2024, when looking exclusively at the so-called cohesion funds, i.e., the Competitiveness and Cohesion Program 2021-2027, the Integrated Territorial Program 2021-2027, and the Efficient Human Resources Program 2021-2027, the Republic of Croatia has published a total of 127 calls worth 2.67 billion euros, of which 2.18 billion euros have been contracted. Additionally, along with already contracted phased projects, contracting of the remaining phased projects worth nearly 2 billion euros is planned for the beginning of 2025, which will push the percentage of contracted funds above 50 percent of the total allocation for Croatia – stated the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds.

However, when these figures are put into context, they do not sound great either. Namely, according to what the Ministry stated, it follows that we will contract half of the funds from cohesion funds in 4.5 years, meaning that we need to realize the remaining 50 percent in the next two and a half years, i.e., by 2027.

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funds of the country

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These percentages clearly indicate that the dynamics of announcing tenders is not satisfactory, and what troubles entrepreneurs the most is that the Ministry does not adhere to the dates and deadlines it sets itself.

– Although indicative plans for announcing tenders are published, they are never realized according to those announcements and are delayed by several months. The same goes for the evaluation of applications – instead of 90 days, it often takes 6 months, and sometimes even longer. Additionally, there are far too many tenders aimed at the public sector and too few for entrepreneurs. We are already in the second half of this ‘new period’ until 2027, and financially we have published less than a third of the calls. If we continue at this pace, it will be difficult to realize everything by the end of the period. There is, of course, the possibility of extending for three years, but then a new financial period begins. It is definitely necessary to reduce the administrative burden in the preparation and implementation of EU projects, adhere to deadlines that bodies in the system set themselves, and publish tenders in accordance with published plans – concluded Nikolić.