Croatia on Thursday takes over the year-long presidency of the EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (EUSAIR), a political framework with 10 participating countries that will deal, for the first time since its establishment in 2014, also with cross-border social issues.

Croatia, which since its admission to the EU ten years ago has lost 400,000 people to emigration, has raised this issue together with countries affected by the same demographic problems.

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital of Sarajevo last week hosted a ministerial forum of the EUSAIR, a political forum in which the European Commission has an advisory role, and which brings together EU member countries Croatia, Slovenia, Italy and Greece as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania and San Marino.

In a region with 70 million inhabitants, those countries currently cooperate in four areas – Blue Growth, Connecting the Region, Environmental Quality and Sustainable Tourism.

The countries should in the future also cooperate in the field of social affairs, a proposal put forward by Croatia that was accepted by the other countries.

During Croatia’s EUSAIR presidency discussions will be held on concrete forms of cooperation and a conference on the topic will be held in March, said Naida Mekic of the Croatian Directorate for EU Operational Programmes Management.

The EUSIAR countries have €10 million available from the EU IPA ADRION programme for the period from 2021 to 2027 and some of that money should be used for worker retraining, inclusion of elderly persons in the labour market, youth labour market integration and other forms of training and cross-border experience exchange.

In all the countries of the Adriatic-Ionian region, except for Slovenia, the unemployment rate is below the EU average as is the rate of employment of vulnerable groups.

Keeping people in region

Croatian Labour and Social Policy Minister Marin Piletic said that Croatia already has its own tools to fight unemployment, such as the “Make a wish” programme, designed to involve hard-to-employ women in the labour market by paying them to make home visits and care for elderly persons, notably in rural areas.

“The southeastern part of Europe is mostly a rural area so we want to offer the good models we have in the EU to our neighbours outside the EU,” Piletic said.

He noted that Croatia already participates in a number of cross-border cooperation programmes with Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, and that the latest initiative is aimed at promoting social rights “in the countries that are on a journey to the EU.”

“At a time when Croatia imports labour, notably from neighbouring countries, we want to help them by promoting social rights, notably of their vulnerable groups,” Piletic said.

Italy, which is also faced with a population deficit and arrival of non-European migrants, supports social welfare as the fifth pillar of the EUSAIR.

We believe social welfare is the fifth missing leg that will make the EUSAIR table stable, said Rossella Rusca, an Italian government official in charge of EU funds.

She believes that EU candidate-countries will thus obtain tools that exist in the EU and that all countries will agree on methods of work in the field of social welfare and exchange information.

Gilles Kittel, a European Commission official, is in charge of implementing the Adriatic-Ionian Strategy, whose political goal is to bring Western Balkan countries closer to EU membership.

Kittel has travelled extensively to those countries lately and is aware that people who live there want to emigrate to wealthier EU countries, including his home country France.

Brain drain and youth unemployment are a major challenge for those countries. That is why social welfare, as the fifth pillar of our strategy, is important. The goal is for people to stay in this region and for employment conditions to improve, Kittel said.