Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Friday that Croatia would have to prepare even more systematically for flood protection considering the growing risk of floods.

“We will have to make careful decisions… I am talking about physical planning, issuing of building permits and the choice of locations because risks today are significantly different than they used to be,” Plenkovic said at a government session.

He said that after the damage from the current floods was established, the government would adopt decisions on aid to the affected counties to help them remove the consequences of flooding, thanking the competent services for their fast response and coordination and the hard work over the past few days in battling floods.

He noted that rainfalls in this part of Europe as intense as the latest ones were unusual for this time of the year.

“This is evidence of increasingly harmful climate change affecting Croatia as well as the rest of the world,” he said, noting that there would be more such phenomena in the future.