Speaking at a thematic session of the SDP branch in Varazdin County on Saturday, SDP leader Pedja Grbin said that the 2024 draft budget that was submitted to the parliament "removes any doubt as to whether the election campaign has begun."

The draft budget amounts to €32 billion, double the amount of the budget of seven years ago, which totalled €16 billion, he said.

“Did pensions grow as fast? They did not. They grew two and half times more slowly than that, and that’s all of Andrej Plenkovic’s policy over the past seven years. Now that the elections are near, they have remembered they should increase pensions, wages and child allowance,” said Grbin.

“What they claimed for the past seven years could not be done has suddenly become possible,” Grbin said, noting that this was because the elections were coming up.

Grbin also described as lies Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic’s statements regarding an investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office into subsidy fraud and misappropriation of EU funds at the Zagreb Faculty of Geodesy.

The SDP leader said that two years had passed since local elections in Varaždin, whose residents voted for the SDP mayor Neven Bosilj, adding that the party’s approval ratings in Varaždin and Varaždin County were growing.