“As for the cases opened by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), Croatia is neither better nor worse than other EU members, ranking somewhere in the middle,” Erlić said during discussion in Parliament on the use of European structural and investment funds in 2021 and the first half of 2022.

His statement came in response to the remark by Martina Vlasic-ljkic (SDP party) that the utilisation of EU funds could be seen through increasing actions by OLAF and investigations into serious fraud related to the use of EU funding.

Erlic said that between 15,000 and 16,000 different projects worth billions of euro are being implemented across Croatia and that it is normal that there are irregularities and suspicions of fraud. “What is important is that the system is dealing with such cases,” he pointed out.

He repeated several times that he is confident that Croatia will manage to spend its entire allocation from the EU Solidarity Fund.

“So far we have spent €730 million of the €1 billion that should be spent by the end of June,” Erlic said in response to the question from MP Davor Bernardic (Social Democrats), who expressed doubt that money from this fund could be well spent on the reconstruction of housing damaged in the earthquakes of three years ago.

Branko Grcic (SDP) said that the biggest problem of the present government is the poor absorption of cohesion funds, noting that only about 55% of that allocation has been used. He asked the minister to explain “how will you use up in the next eight months what has not been used in the last nine years?”

“The absorption effect is increasing as we are drawing closer to the end of the programming period,” Erlic said, adding that he expects 20% more funds to be paid out this year than last year.

Sandra Bencic (Mozemo! platform) said: “There are no development indicators for municipalities, towns and counties so we cannot assess the effect of EU funds on individual local and regional government units.”

Davor Dretar (DP party) noted that dairy farming is steadily on the decline despite investment. “€20 million has been invested in dairy farming and the number of dairy cows is steadily on the decline. Dairy farms are closing down. There were about 13,000 dairy farms in 2012 and about 3,800 at the end of 2021,” the MP said.