Croatia uses solar energy too little, but the Mozemo! platform plans to change that, the party's coordinators Tomislav Tomasevic and Sandra Bencic said on Thursday at a news conference they held together with European Parliament members from the Greens.

“Zagreb has 0.7 megawatts of installed solar panel capacity on all (more than 1,000) public buildings,” Tomasevic, who is the mayor of Zagreb, said at the news conference, which focused on the green transition of Croatia and the EU.

We aim to increase that number fifty times, he said, adding that on Friday a 0.3 megawatt solar panel would be installed on a hospital in the Zagreb neighbourhood of Jankomir.

Even though the goal seems ambitious, Tomasevic insists that it is possible to achieve while Bencic called out the government for not removing legislative obstacles to enable citizens to manage their energy on their own and put an end to energy poverty.

“Transition to solar energy and fast decarbonisation of the energy sector, primarily through households” will be in the focus of the party’s election platform, Bencic said.

Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout said that it was hard for him to believe that Croatia fared poorly in terms of solar energy production given the number of sunny days it has throughout the year.

In terms of solar energy use, Croatia is only 26th in the EU, it has only around 220 MW of photovoltaic systems but the situation has been changing for the better in recent years, it was said at a conference on solar energy held in May this year.

Joining the European Green Party

Mozemo! has submitted an application to join the European Green Party and it expects to become a member in late January.

Green MEPs expressed their support for the party’s plans at today’s news conference.

Eickhout said the Greens needed new strong voices for energy transition.

French Green MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield said she had great expectations and high hopes for the new Croatian partner.

I expect two MEPs from Mozemo!, she said.

Eickhout, who co-chairs the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, said he was confident that the green and energy transition would be a subject of political debate in the campaign for the 2024 European election.

That issue has become even more political due to the war in Ukraine, which shows that dependence on fossil fuels from regimes like Russia’s is bad, not only for the environment and inflation but also geopolitically, Eickhout said.