Croatia is no longer experiencing macroeconomic imbalances, with its debt ratios having declined significantly over the years and continuing to display strong downward dynamics, the European Commission said on Monday.

As part of its 2022 European Semester Spring Package the EC has published findings of an in-depth analysis of the macroeconomic situation in 12 EU countries that previously had macroeconomic imbalances.

Of those 12 countries, only Croatia and Ireland have been found to no longer experience macroeconomic imbalances.

In the previous analysis published in 2021 nine of the 12 countries were found to have macroeconomic imbalances – Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden, while Cyprus, Greece, and Italy were found to exhibit excessive macroeconomic imbalances.

“Ireland and Croatia are no longer experiencing imbalances,” the EC says, noting that in both countries “debt ratios have declined significantly over the years and continue to display strong downward dynamics”.

In the other 10 countries the macroeconomic situation has remained unchanged.

As part of its European Semester Autumn Package in late November 2021, the EC said that it was necessary to make detailed analyses to reassess the existence of  macroeconomic imbalances in 12 countries, including Croatia.

Croatia had been in the process of monitoring macroeconomic imbalances since 2014. Until 2019 it had excessive macroeconomic imbalances. In February 2019, the EC found that it was no longer experiencing excessive macroeconomic imbalances but only macroeconomic imbalances.

The macroeconomic imbalance procedure was designed to complete the system of EU monitoring by monitoring member-countries’ performance on a number of macroeconomic indicators.