Split Mayor Ivica Puljak said on Wednesday that he would report the Ministry of Regional Development to the European Commission due to the lack of criteria and unfair distribution of European money to cities in Croatia.

Puljak criticised the ministry for the planned allocation of European funds for urban agglomerations in the financial period from 2021 to 2027. He claims that the biggest cities to lose out from the allocation will be Zagreb and Split.

“In this case, cities that have united with municipalities and other smaller cities to form an agglomeration are being short-changed. Given that the ministry does not know how to explain the criteria by which it made its decisions, yesterday I asked to meet with the minister, who would not receive me because she did not have time ” said Puljak.

He explained that when money allocations are divided according to the number of inhabitants in cities that are centres of agglomerations, Zagreb gets €104 per inhabitant, Split €342, while no other agglomeration centre gets less than €500. When that is divided by the number of inhabitants in the agglomerations, Zagreb gets €75, Split €169, Varazdin €185 and the others get no less than €250.

“This kind of distribution is extremely non-transparent and unfair because there are no clear criteria, and I wanted to inform citizens, city and municipal authorities with which we are united that this distribution is unfair,” said Puljak.

Asked if he thinks that all this is happening because the HDZ is not in power in Zagreb and Split, he replied that he does not want to speculate about the criteria because he does not know what they are.