Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Thursday there was a certain increase in the number of people vaccinated against Covid-19 with the first dose, including 8,000 yesterday, which he said was encouraging.

“It’s evident that our topics from the last government session have encouraged a certain number of our fellow citizens to be vaccinated,” he said at a cabinet meeting, a week after he said that the government would make job-keeping payments conditional on worker vaccination.

Any minority should feel ‘safe and free’

Plenkovic also said that “members of minorities, any minority, sexual, ethnic, should feel safe and free.”

He added that some politicians in Croatia still did not realise that minority rights were not a privilege but a guarantee of equality.

“In Croatia, minority rights are a constitutional and legal category, and I insist that they are not to be tolerated but honoured,” Plenkovic said, adding that he considered attacks on the LGBT community a hate crime. “We don’t want that, we don’t agree with that.”

He also condemned the hate levelled at MPs of the Bridge party, saying it was unacceptable.