The initiative "Let's protect the Croatian kuna" has failed to collect enough signatures for a referendum against the government's plan to adopt the euro as legal currency in Croatia, the Croatian Sovereignists party announced on Tuesday.

“We gathered a total of 334,582 valid signatures, which means that we were 34,285 signatures short. Nevertheless, I think this is a respectable number given that we are in the middle of a pandemic,” MP Marijan Pavlicek, a member of the organising committee, told a press conference.

The purpose of the initiative was to include in the Constitution a provision saying that the change of the national currency can be decided only by voters at a referendum.

Pavlicek said that the number of signatures collected was a message to the government not to ignore it, but to call a referendum anyway.

“This shows that if there had been slightly more wisdom among other political groups, who have on several occasions voiced their support for the preservation of the Croatian kuna, together we could have gathered more than 500,000 signatures. Despite that, we are satisfied,” he said.

Pavlicek said that Croatian Sovereignists would continue fighting in Parliament against euro adoption, stressing that Croatia was still not ready for entering the eurozone.