The green-left bloc caucus on Tuesday called on the government to extend a moratorium on enforcements until the relevant law is amended or, they said, a social disaster will occur with a flood of enforcement notices, more citizens with blocked accounts and thousands of citizens in debt slavery.

We will send a legislative package into parliamentary procedure to extend the moratorium on enforcements until such time that the relevant legislation is amended because lifting the moratorium on Friday will jeopardise citizens’ existential security, MP Sandra Bencic told a press conference.

Sustainable debt repayment plan instead of long-term account blockades

These legislative proposals will guarantee debtors an equal status in enforcement procedures and a sustainable repayment plan, including an individualised approach to each debtor so that accounts will not be blocked but instead a repayment plan will be prepared that citizens will be able to manage.

The intention is also to restrict the possibility of selling debts to debt collecting agencies because small debts by citizens are creating a huge profit for those agencies, mostly owned by foreigners, the MPs said.

“Last year for example, the Matrix company ‘exported’ more than HRK 70 million in profit to Germany,” said Bencic.

MP Rada Boric warned that the health and economic situation in the country has not changed and that in September there were more than 35,000 new unemployed people.

Citizens with low incomes or without any income should be relieved of paying interest on their debts, she added.

MP Katarina Peovic underscored that one must not agree to the imposed notion of the “new normal.” St. Mark’s Square has been blocked, citizens’ accounts are blocked and we have to constantly warn about what has led to these blockades, she said.

Enforcements on the most part refer to the poor

“In public we hear off-the-cuff remarks that individuals are responsible for the debts they have incurred. We have to point out that the majority of people with blocked accounts or facing enforcements are on the most part poor people who were not able to pay ordinary bills,” said Peovic.

Indicators of poverty and social exclusion in Croatia are truly dramatic. We have almost one million people at risk of poverty and one in four citizens have their account blocked and are threatened by enforcements, Peovic underscored.

MP Tomislav Tomasevic warned that public notaries themselves have said that of the 170,000 current enforcements, the majority refer to water, electricity and gas bills, which indicates that this refers to socially vulnerable citizens.