Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Friday announced €1.5 billion in investment in education in the years ahead, saying that without investing in young people and education, it is difficult to be competitive on the globally connected market.

“The years ahead will pass in the biggest investments ever in the education system infrastructure, starting with kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, gyms and, finally, investing in higher education. The projects are worth €1.5 billion, maybe there’ll be even more,” he said in the eastern Croatian town of Pozega at a ceremony marking Pozega-Slavonia County Day.

Plenkovic said he expected that students would soon get more attention from professors and acquire enough knowledge to be competitive on the domestic and foreign labour markets.

“Without investing in young people, knowledge and education, it’s difficult to be competitive on the globally connected market which is trying to keep up with the fourth industrial revolution.”

Plenkovic said that in the past few years Croatia had shown that it could keep jobs in a big crisis.

“There were political parties which said in spring 2020 that we would have 400,000 jobless. However, about 130,000 enterprises were given time to remain on their feet and adapt to the new conditions. In those circumstances, companies and workers in Pozega-Slavonia County were given strong support,” he added.