After attending a church service at the Zagreb Cathedral commemorating Croatia's Statehood Day, President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic sent congratulatory messages on the Statehood Day to the people and commented on the problem of population drain in Croatia.

“Mobility is a good thing, people have the opportunity to work and study, but I hope (they) come back, and that we create the conditions for the people to come back,” said President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic.

Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandrokovic said he wished the people would come back.

“This is our country and theirs, we must fight for a better life here. We can do better, we’ve been through a very difficult period, and now is the time to build our country in the best possible way,” Jandrokovic said.

He called for unity and mutual respect, tolerance, and patriotism as the foundations of the country.

“There are different world views, but this is our country and we must all build it together,” he said.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that everyone should work on improving the institutions, as well as democracy and the economy, to give people the opportunity to live and work in their country.

“We must create the conditions for people to stay,” he said, and added that the emigration trends overlapped with Croatia’s joining the EU which removed the barriers for freedom of movement.

He said the same would have happened earlier if the barriers had disappeared sooner.

“I’m convinced that the movement is in two directions, and that the people who want do live and work abroad for a while will still return to their home country,” Prime Minister said.

“We will do everything in our power, currently the unemployment is at a historic low,” he added.

He said that the population drain was not a new problem.

“This is one of the basic issues, we talked about it yesterday in part (at a mini-summit on migration in Brussels). You have enormous positive demographic trends in Africa and the Middle East where the situation is completely different, there is such poverty there that people wish they had Croatian standard,” Plenkovic said.

He said the key to demographic revival was optimism.

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