Opposition MPs said on Friday the 2021 population census was compromised and that it raised more questions than it answered, highlighting the different percentages of Catholic Church members and the interpretation of the data.

Pedja Grbin of the Social Democratic Party said it was scandalous that the Croatian Bureau of Statistics presented the census results online, that it must remove all doubts, and that it did not do a good job.

He said “the reality which this population census has shown” is that Croatia has one million less inhabitants than 30 years ago.

It’s necessary to focus on why there are fewer Croats, Serbs, and all others who used to live in this country but now don’t want to, he added.

Grbin criticised “some politicians” for being glad that the eastern town of Vukovar has fewer Serbs than in the 2011 census.

Nikola Grmoja of the conservative populist Most party pointed to irregularities in the 2021 census, saying “it’s a disgrace that if someone declares himself as a Christian and says he is a member of the Catholic Church, he is not listed as a Catholic.”

He said he is convinced that Croatia has even fewer inhabitants than the census shows. Regarding the drop in the number of Serbs in Vukovar, he said there was a general population decrease.

Bojan Glavasevic of the Green-Left Bloc said there had been no political will to solve some minority issues in Vukovar and that the data showing that Serbs make up less than 30% of the town’s population “comes as a convenient excuse that maybe it never needed to be done.”

He said the question was why the general demographic situation in Vukovar was as it was, given that a lot of money has been invested in the town. The basic problem is the quality of living, he added.

Marijan Pavlicek of the right-wing Sovereignists said the decrease in the number of Catholics was perhaps due to the fact that “certain Church dignitaries have distanced themselves from the common people” and turned towards the government as well as due to Western trends.

His party colleague Vesna Vucemilovic said she was more concerned about the fact that the share of people over 65 in the population had increased 8% in ten years. “That’s a huge blow to the entire economy and the question is how we will finance their pensions already now, let alone in the future.”

Centre MP Marijana Puljak said the census results were the best evaluation of the HDZ party’s rule. She, too, noted that Croatia has one million less inhabitants than in 1991.

In the last ten years alone, more than 400,000 persons emigrated in search for a better living, she said.

Puljak said the ruling HDZ had destroyed Croatia through theft, crime and corruption, and that the only demographic policy was to defeat the HDZ in the next election. It’s either the HDZ or Croatia, she added.