Zagreb Deputy Mayor, Danijela Dolenec, said on Monday that the city budget could be revised if the High Administrative Court "does not rule soon that the amended decision on financial support for stay-at-home parents is lawful," state agency Hina said on Monday, referring to a costly child subsidy scheme that her city government decided to abolish. 

The High Administrative Court on Monday suspended the city’s decision to cut financial support for stay-at-home parents in Zagreb. The scheme, which paid parents subsidies, was introduced by former mayor Milan Bandic.

“Until the adoption of a final decision on the legality of the amended decision, introduced by the city administration of Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic, the beneficiaries of the stay-at-home parent scheme will continue to receive their allowances, which amount to 65 percent of the gross salary in the business sector in Zagreb,” Hina said, without clarifying how much money this translates to per parent, or how many parents receive the benefit.

“Under the amended decision of the City Assembly from December 2021, the allowance was to have been reduced to 1,000 kuna (€132), which was opposed by stay-at-home parents who had applied for the scheme and who asked the court to assess if the drastic cut in the allowance was legal,” Hina said, without saying how much the allowance had been before the cut.

Addressing reporters outside the city administration building, Deputy Mayor Dolenec said that now “a period of uncertainty would follow, both for the city administration and for the beneficiaries of the stay-at-home parent scheme.” She said that statistics showed that the number of newborn children in Zagreb had dropped since 2016, when the scheme was originally introduced, “so the scheme is not serving its purpose, while 1.8 billion kuna (€238 million) has been spent (on it since then).”

“That is too steep for any budget,” she added.

Dolenec expressed regret the court did not rule on the merits of the case but had just suspended the city administration’s decision. Since the allowance is paid retroactively, the city still has funds to pay the allowances in May, she said. “If by then there is no final court decision, we will indeed have to consider a budget revision because the funds at stake are significant, around 40 million kuna (€5.3 million) per month, she said.

Dolenec reiterated the city’s position that the decision amending the stay-at-home parent scheme was entirely legal, stressing that if the court rules contrary to that, it would “set a dangerous precedent because it would prevent the democratically elected city governments to exercise their powers and define allowances.”

City administration to invest €3.3m in expanding kindergarten capacity

Dolenec said that despite the court’s decision, the city would embark on expanding the kindergarten network, having earmarked 25 million kuna (€3.3 million) for that purpose in this year’s budget, which should allow 500 more children to enroll in kindergartens next school year. Hina did not say how many children already attend kindergartens in Zagreb.

The issue of the stay-at-home parents scheme, which involved generous subsidies to people who choose to be stay-at-home parents, turned controversial following the last local election in May 2021. The scheme, introduced by the late mayor Milan Bandic, is seen by opponents as an expensive populist play Bandic devised to attract conservative voters.

The left-green coalition which took power in 2021 and ended the decades-long reign of Bandic in Croatia’s capital announced they would axe the program and invest in kindergartens instead, which caused a wide gamut of conservative and right-wing groups to protest the move.

City councillors of the conservative populist Most party said on Monday that the court’s decision to temporarily suspend the decision was “the first step towards annulling the illegal, unconstitutional, and non-statutory decision of the City Assembly adopted under the dictate of Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic and City Assembly Chairman Josko Klisovic.”

The right-wing Homeland Movement also welcomed the ruling, saying that the city administration tried to scrap the stay-at-home-parents scheme “for purely ideological reasons.”

“We have said several times that the retroactive annulment of this scheme is legally questionable, unusual, and immoral – and that the present city government, headed by Tomislav Tomasevic, has to be ready to take political consequences if their decision falls through in court,” said Igor Peternel, the leader of the Zagreb branch of the Homeland Movement.

Hina did not say when the courts might make a final ruling on the case or whether any deadline for this even exists.

(€1 = 7.54 kuna)