President Zoran Milanovic said on Monday in Donji Miholjac that Croatia needed a strong, fair, uncorrupted local government and a central state that would always have to ensure equal standards.

At a special session of the Donji Miholjac Town Council, held on the occasion of the town’s day, Milanovic said that the area was not remote but that it was on the sidelines a bit so it had not made as much progress as it should have in the last 30 years, which was obvisouly the price the entire Slavonia was paying.

He said that European funds should be used for further development. The government is trying hard, but in the end it is on the best and the most hard-working among you to ensure that the money really comes here, said Milanovic.

Talking about the system of local self-government, he recalled his earlier speeches when he said that the existing model of counties was sustainable. Croatia perhaps does not need 502 units of local self-government but it cannot have 100 either, as was the case in socialism, because that is not good.

“Maybe some municipalities will disappear but that is more an exception than a rule because decisions on life and basic matters are made where people live,” Milanovic said.

Osijek-Baranja County prefect Ivan Anusic recalled that in the past three years the County had invested HRK 22.9 million (€3 mn) in projects in the area of Donji Miholjac, adding that a project for an irrigation system for 682 hectares of land, worth nearly HRK 87 million (€11.5 mn), was in the pipeline.

Donji Miholjac Mayor Goran Aladic said that a new secondary school with a sports hall, worth over HRK 50 million (€6.6 mn), was under construction, that over HRK 3 million (€398k) had been invested in a kindergarten, and that the road from the centre of Donji Miholjac to the border with Hungary, worth HRK 9 million (€1.2 mn), had been finished.

Aladic said that projects together worth over HRK 65 million (€8.6 mn) were currently underway in the town.