Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said on Wednesday there certainly existed in Croatia paramilitary groups which wanted to overthrow the authorities.

“I would call it a phenomenon which is not exclusively national and which has a broader dimension,” he said, responding to questions from the press after a cabinet session.

Bozinovic said there were more and more groups which, in different ways, radicalised first and foremost young people, and that the patterns of action by terrorist groups were changing.

He said that in recent years no terrorist group had claimed responsibility for a terrorist act in Europe, but that there were plenty of radicalised individuals who were in touch, directly or online, who accepted a certain ideology and violence as a way to solve problems.

The Croatian and other police forces deal with that, and services in Europe coordinate their activities in line with that, he said, adding that “the whole system must find a response.”

Asked about the common denominator of these organised crime groups, Bozinovic said the motives behind extremism and terrorism could be related to religion, civilisation or anarchy.

He said the QAnon ideology had moved from the United States to Europe in recent years, prompting the EU to adopt regulations and directives on the elimination of online terrorist content.

Still, he added, those groups find ways to exchange messages and organise, and there are no indications that this could diminish in the years ahead.

Bozinovic said that in the EU those were mostly conspiracy theorists, people protesting against COVID and COVID protocols, government decisions, people who refused and were probably incapable of discussing those problems, resorting to violence instead.

The victims in all that, besides the general public, are impressionable individuals who fall under the influence of those groups or persons with social or other problems, Bozinovic said.

Asked how many such groups there were, he said no one could say the exact number, but that there were not so many that they could not be dealt with.