The deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Sinisa Hajdas-Doncic, on Tuesday criticized the "absence of public debate" about the so-called "national recovery and resilience plan" presented by the government to spend some €6.3bn in EU funding, saying that Croatia and Greece had been allocated the largest proportion of funding for this purpose because they are "the worst (performing countries) in the European Union."

Hajdas-Doncic’s comments were directed at Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic.

“Croatia was granted the money through the national recovery and resilience plan not because of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic’s good connections with the Brussels administration, but because of the fact that the parameters that were taken into account from 2015 to 2019, namely the employment and unemployment rates and the decline in GDP, show that Croatia, along with Greece, is the worst country in the EU. Croatia and Greece got the most money because they were affected the most, and that is because their economies are too dependent on tourism,” Hajdas-Doncic told a news conference.

European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), a program which distributes most of the recovery funding to 27 member countries, had earmarked €6.3bn for Croatia and €17.8bn to Greece. The top recipient is Spain (€69.5bn), followed by Italy (€68.9bn), France (€39.4bn), Germany (€25.6bn) and Poland (€23.9bn).

One of the conditions set by the EU to get this plan approved and funded is agreeing to a plan of reforms, a document that has not yet been presented to the public.

“The alleged government document which has 700 pages is like Yeti – because no one has seen it,” Hajdas-Doncic quipped.

“The government is not listening to business people or the public. Instead, it is just going through the motions, copying and pasting projects that have been going around for five or six years into this plan. Croatia has used up only 50 percent of EU funds it had previously agreed. And instead getting all of us to join forces to improve our absorption capacity and to implement (eco-friendly) ‘green procurement’ in Croatian economy, this document puts the focus solely on construction sector and in part on projects in the IT industry. Why didn’t we invest more in manufacturing?” Hajdas-Doncic asked rhetorically.

He also said that the plan does not specify any goals or timelines or even how the planned investments would affect the government’s budget and the country’s GDP.