As EU member state, Croatia will benefit from European funds to boost economic growth and integration into European policies and programmes.
The economic situation is difficult; by 2009, the Croatian economy has enjoyed 10 years of growth of foreign investments, together with a low inflation, stable currency and infrastructure development, but its investment activity has reduced mostly because of the global economic crisis and there are still structural problems. For the first quarter of 2013, EC estimated a 1% drop of the GDP. However, measures necessary to structural economic reforms have been implemented in order to optimise competitiveness and growing estimates. In this context, in order to benefit from the future support of the EU, “Croatia has to ensure an adequate administrative capacity for the management of funds and to initiate mature projects. These characteristics are absolutely necessary for the efficient use of structural and cohesion funds”, declared Štefan Füle, the European Commissioner of Expansion and Neighbouring Policy.
In April, the Croatian Government adopted the Economic Programme which is a periodical obligation of the accession. “With the Economic Programme, Croatia has accessed the European semester, an instrument which coordinates EU economic policies and objectives within the Europe 2020 Strategy”, declared Branko Grcic, Minister of Regional Development.
The programme consists in the convergence to the other macro-economic projects and fiscal frameworks for short and long term reforms and, according to the programme adopted by authorities, Croatia’s GDP is estimated at a growth of 0.7% (for 2013) and will be accelerated to a growth of 2.4% (in 2014) and 3.5% (in 2015 and 2016).
In order to support economic and social development, but also to encourage regional and cross-border cooperation and consolidate institutions, Croatia has benefited from financial support through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) since 2007. Therefore, EU has allocated Croatia a financing worth EUR 998 Million as future member state and the country can also absorb other EU funds (structural, cohesion). Also, starting with 2008, the go-vernment has adopted the Conclusion on participating to EU programmes, among which FP7, Marco Polo II, Customs 2013 (programme which offers customs admi-nistrations the opportunity of cooperating in different areas), Framework programme for competitiveness and innovation (CIP), next to other 11 programmes.
Croatia will become eligible for structural and cohesion funds starting with the second half of 2013 the total funds approved being worth EUR 687.5 Million, the contribution of the new EU member state to the community budget being of EUR 374 Million. Funds for the financial assistance of Croatia in 2013 amount to EUR 93.5 Million with access to all the 5th CIP components (assistance for transition and consolidation of institutions, cross-border cooperation, regional development, human resources development and rural development).
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