Four months after the government offered Croatian emigrants 200,000 kuna (€26.436) to come back home and start a business, not a single one has returned and only 16 applications for a move to rural areas have been filed, the Vecernji List daily reported on Monday.

The financial support was offered under the “Labour Mobility – I Choose Croatia” scheme, an upgrade to the self-employment scheme, under which “you get a maximum of 130,000 (€17,000) if you have a business plan and an idea, and evaluators at the HZZ (Croatian Employment Service) approve your project. You get part of the sum at the beginning and if the project is realised, you get the rest over 24 months,” Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic was quoted as saying when unveiling the scheme. He added that the idea was to increase the amount from 130,000 (€17,000) to 150,000 kuna (€19,800).

Under the same scheme, people who have been in work in an EU country for at least a year in the last two years would get an additional 50,000 kuna (€6,600) as an incentive and those wishing to move to a rural area would be allocated 25,000 kuna (€3,300).

The HZZ has so far received 16 applications, 11 of which related to labour mobility within Croatia and five concerned applications filed by emigrants. Of the 16 applications, nine have been processed and four of them have been rejected, while seven are being processed. The five applications that have been granted relate to labour mobility within Croatia and concern people who live in Croatia. Over the next 24 months they will receive 175,000 kuna (€23,131), the HZZ told Vecernji List.

(€1 = 7.5 kuna)