Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Wednesday the government decided to give the City of Zagreb an interest-free HRK 150 million loan to help with liquidity, adding that the capital was very important to the government.

The decision was made today, he told the press in the northern Croatian town of Bjelovar.

“The government will help all cities. It’s normal that the capital is very important to us and I think the cooperation with all departments these past few months has been very good. There are no outstanding issues,” he said.

The prime minister also commented on some politicians’ claims that Croatia had received so much money from the EU because it was the least developed member state.

“Those are people who gave nothing to Croatia’s EU journey. A political structure of parties and actors has developed in Croatia who have no clue about all that we did from the international recognition in 1992 until 1 July 2013.”

Plenkovic said that if such actors had been at the helm during the accession process, Croatia would not have joined the EU for another 150 years.

“That’s the difference that we will clear up. It’s good that there are actors pushing for a false referendum on the euro with some weird question that’s funny in itself. Let’s see what people on the Croatian political scene think, I want to see who they are. For example, these from Zagreb, We Can! They don’t know if they are for the euro or not. They certainly are not, but they don’t know. I guess they should learn a little more about it. SDP, let’s hear it, are you for or against?”

The prime minister went on to say that now was the time to see who, in times of overcoming the COVID crisis, had made it possible for Croatia to receive €25 billion in grants for a whole decade, and who were those who maybe were not for joining Schengen and the euro area.

“We have a debate that is, to put it mildly, bizarre,” he said.