The President of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, sat down with N1’s Anka Bilic-Keserovic on Thursday for an exclusive interview, the first one since the coronavirus pandemic spread throughout Europe and the world and Croatia’s capital of Zagreb was hit with the strongest earthquake in the last 140 years.

Many are wondering where the President has been for three weeks while we have been living in this extraordinary conditions. You spoke to the public once, do you think the Government and the crisis management team are doing an exemplary job and there is nothing to add?

I’m doing my job. When the crisis began, it became clear we would have to change the way we live and that’s when I addressed the public. I talked about social distancing, that clumsy expression that we now hear every day. I told the public we have to look after the elderly, our mothers, fathers, grandparents. In the meantime, I’m keeping track of what is happening; I’m in contact with everyone who has relevant information.

How well do you think the country’s healthcare system is holding up in all of this? When the crisis began, many were afraid it would collapse, considering the strain.

Our healthcare system is robust, it’s an old system put in place before we were a democracy. A lot of it has been destroyed, but it’s a tough structure. Our system is burdened by enormous debt to the pharmaceutical companies… but that’s just one aspect of it. This robustness of it is good. But that is becoming obvious in all eastern-European countries. It’s all very similar, the death toll is lower, the number of active cases is smaller in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and here, and that is in direct correlation with the number of those tested, which is lower here.

What is your stance on testing?

I don’t know. Much smarter people have differing opinions on that even though the instruction seems to be – test, test, test. We are testing, even though we’re having a small number of fatalities. From what I’ve been told, most of the people who contracted the virus are at home, we have about 35 people on ventilators, and there are more than enough ventilators, more than 800.

Many are praising Croatia and the restrictive measures that were put in place here; the results are visible, hospitals are not under so much strain.

Yes, and that’s okay, but those measures are pretty much the same everywhere. We’re looking at unprecedented cooperation here… For now, this impression of discipline and commitment in times of trouble, that makes us stronger, but the measures are pretty much the same everywhere.

We see what happened in Italy.

What happened in Italy was horrible. Eastern Europe as a whole seems to be doing okay. It’s too early to try and interpret why. Serbia introduced a curfew, their results are not as good as here, but better than Spain, for example.

The same goes for Great Britain… the measures are the same, more or less, everywhere, apart from maybe Sweden and Denmark, all other countries have, led by some invisible hand, introduced new rules of behaviour. We won’t ever know for sure (what’s working). We’ll have to analyse everything when it’s over, for our own sake, not because we want to criticise anyone, because I have no criticism to offer now.

Every country is looking out for itself right now, and that’s that. We don’t know. Whether the EU helps countries through the so-called coronabonds or stability funds like Germany, the Netherlands, and countries in the north are suggesting, that’s less important, it’s important that some form of help is agreed on.

What about the economy? You don’t think the EU has failed here, but this situation requires a fast response because the losses for the economy are huge.

The losses are horrific and it remains to be seen the exact scope of (the impact). We also have to see how we will balance it all out.

How much time will be wasted because the EU countries cannot come up with a mutual agreement? On the one hand there is Italy and Spain with high death toll and infection rates, they are having huge problems, and on the other hand you have northern countries. How can we talk about one economy if national interests are coming first?

We are talking about human lives here, and the countries and the elected governments are in charge of those lives exclusively. It’s very clear. Help will come, absolutely it will. But what I find problematic here is that we don’t know much about this virus, and it may stay among us for a while now. We know it takes the lives of the elderly and sick and we know whom we must protect absolutely.

How much more resilient do you think the Croatian economy is now, compared to the economic crash of 2008?

It’s a completely different situation. This is the crisis of supply and demand… and it cannot be compared in any way with the crisis of 2008, not looking at the resilience of the banking system, not looking at the unemployment rates which are much lower than they were in 2008 in the whole of Europe. The circumstances are different. This crisis has not been not in the making, it shocked us all.

Do you think the government is doing a good job?

At the moment, yes. Ask me again in two or three weeks and I’ll be very happy if I can say that this is it now. That would mean the crisis has stopped and there is not more need to talk about it. But if we don’t go back to living as we used to, then we will have to talk about other, more restrictive measures, not just us, but everyone.

How much will the epidemic change the global circumstances?

People will be scared and there is no sense to talk about how we each of us feel about this personally. People are traumatised by this, it’s difficult to be rational right now when people’s health and the health and lives of their loved ones is in danger. It will take time for us to begin to get over this.

How do you comment on the fact that the Zagreb city authorities have not reacted well after the earthquake late in March?

The army came out and 300 professional soldiers ended up cleaning the debris from the streets. That’s not what the army is supposed to do, and the City could have handled that without their help. Every day after the earthquake, chimneys continue to collapse because of the damage and no one is clearing the debris from the streets anymore. The City has the resources to clean up ten times as much without anyone noticing it’s happening… The people should be the priority.

Members of the government have donated their salaries for rebuilding efforts in Zagreb, will you do the same?

I talked about this some time ago. I think I will give that money for the fight against the coronavirus because, despite the fact I am from Zagreb and I live in the city centre, the fight against this pandemic is bigger than Croatia.