A panel discussion entitled "Water - our national treasure" said on Friday that Croatia should include principles on water protection in the Constitution because water is its strategic resource and national treasure.

“This topic is of strategic and long-term interest for Croatia, not only because water is a strategic resource in the 21st century, but also because Croatia is one of the countries with the largest reserves of drinking water in Europe,” Professor Robert Podolnjak from the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb said at the panel, organised by the opposition Bridge party.

He said it is important to include some principles on water protection in the Constitution, considering the continuous policy of the European Union, which, he said, tends towards liberalisation, marketisation and covert privatisation of public water supply.

In opposition to these trends, the role of the “Right to Water” movement in Europe is becoming increasingly prominent, Podolnjak underlined, citing Slovenia as a positive example, which explicitly stipulated the right to water in its Constitution.

Hence, it has prevented any possibility of privatising water supplies or giving that service to private capital, he said.

“European directives are above Croatian laws and only the Croatian Constitution guarantees that water supply and sanitation services cannot be privatised,” Podolnjak emphasised.

Professor Davor Romic from the Faculty of Agriculture said that agriculture is one of the biggest consumers of water and that water and agriculture are actually in a synergistic relationship in which water affects agriculture and agriculture affects water.

He recalled that since 2005 the government has had a strategic document called “National project for irrigation and management of agricultural land and water”, assessing that in 15 years the project documentation has been prepared well, the implementation of the system was done half-heartedly, while its use after it was built is bad.