The leader of the SDP party, Pedja Grbin, announced on Tuesday that his party and nine other left-wing, centrist and regional parties have agreed to form a coalition "For a Better Croatia", which will run in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

“These are 10 parties that are fully aware of the current situation in Croatia and also know in which direction the country is being steered by the HDZ,” said Grbin after the talks on forming the coalition.

“We are aware that Croatia can do better, we are aware that Croatia must do better. After today’s talks, we have agreed on joint participation in the elections.”

In addition to the SDP, the focus was on nine other parties: the Istrian Democratic Party (IDS), the regional party PGS, the Reformists, the Centre, the Workers’ Front, the SSIP, GLAS and the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS).

Negotiations on the composition of the candidate lists for ten constituencies in Croatia will continue in the coming days.

SDP and Mozemo party discuss possible “dotted” coalition

In view of the fact that the Mozemo party is not involved in this 10-party coalition, the SDP leader said that the modalities of cooperation between the SDP and We Can! will also be discussed in the coming days.

Mozemo has already made it clear that it would not accept a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) before the elections.

On 1 March, Mozemo and the SDP announced that they would start talks on forming coalitions in individual constituencies to win more votes in constituencies where left-wing parties are traditionally less popular than those of the right in order to achieve “a desirable change of government”.

At the end of January, Mozemo MP Sandra Bencic stated that her party would not agree to a nationwide coalition with the SDP before the elections, as “there would be “no synergy at national level” if they ran together in the elections.

A significant part of our voters would not support that (a pre-election coalition with the SDP) and maybe they would not even go to the polls in that case, and that would be the worst-case scenario for us, Bencic said.

However, she does not rule out a coalition with the SDP after the elections.

Plenkovic “not concerned” about opposition coalition

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Tuesday that the HDZ party and its partners are running with great success in the parliamentary elections and that the opposition is looking for problems in every solution. He added that he is therefore not concerned about the new “sausage-shaped” opposition coalition.

The opposition has its own approach, the parliamentary majority always has its own plan, which it works on quietly and without pressure from those who want to play a dominant role and push through issues on the political stage. I think their work can be characterised as follows – we have found solutions to numerous challenges and crises, and their work over the past seven years has been to look for problems in our solutions, Plenkovic said in an interview for the national broadcaster HRT when talking about the upcoming parliamentary elections.

He firmly ruled out the possibility of a coalition with the Domovinski pokret or the Most party.