Health Ministry is intensively working on using EU funds to finance projects which involve combined emergency wards, day hospitals and outpatient surgeries, the ministry said in a press release on Tuesday in response to media reports on projects to overhaul emergency wards with EU funding.

The response came after Croatian weekly magazine Nacional said that Health Minister Kujundzic had pulled some 26.5 million kuna (€3.5 million) worth of funding for hospitals in the cities of Varazdin, Split and Osijek for combined emergency wards.

The ministry said that, after having successfully contracted funding in 2016-2018, the ministry is now managing projects worth 1,5 billion kuna (€202.1 million), contracted as part of their 2014-2020 operational programme Competitiveness and Cohesion.

The ministry said that in July 2016 the Regional Development and EU Funds Ministry invited applications for 173 million kuna (€23.3 million) to be allocated for projects in seven hospitals: three clinical hospitals – in the cities of Zagreb, Osijek and Split; and four general hospitals – in the cities of Varazdin, Dubrovnik, Sisak, and Bjelovar.

Five of the seven projects are being implemented – in Zagreb, Varazdin, Dubrovnik, Sisak and Bjelovar. Implementation of the Osijek project will start soon, while the Split hospital is expected to apply in 2019.

The ministry said the project documentation is evaluated by the Expert Commission assessing the alignment of EU projects with the health sector’s strategic framework. The lowest grant amount approved is 3.5 million kuna (€471,700) and the highest is 20 million kuna (€2.7 million) for general hospitals, and 31 million kuna (€4.1 million) for clinical hospitals.

All decisions on financial allocations for projects to overhaul emergency wards are made in consultation with the Regional Development and EU Funds Ministry, the press release said.

(€1 = 7.4 kuna)

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