Croatia parliament approves new coalition government with nationalists

5 months ago 26

Croatia’s parliament on Friday (17 May) approved a new coalition government allying the ruling conservatives with a right-wing nationalist party.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković formed the new government with members of the nationalist anti-migrant Homeland Movement (DP) party following an inconclusive election last month.

Under the coalition agreement, Plenković’s centre-right HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) party will keep its ministers of internal affairs and culture, which means that policies in key sectors concerning migrant policy and minority rights will not change, analysts say.

DF, which entered the government for the first time, will head the agriculture ministry, a new ministry of demography and part of the economy ministry which was split in two departments. The HDZ has kept ministers from the previous government, bringing in only one new face.

Parliament speaker Gordan Jandroković said 79 members had voted in favour of the coalition with 61 against.

“I note that confidence has been granted” to the new cabinet, he said.

Plenković’s HDZ won 61 seats while the DP secured 14 in April’s election.

The long-ruling HDZ led the NATO member country of 3.8 million people to join the EU’s Schengen free travel area and the eurozone last year.

“We want successful, vital, just, sustainable and sovereign Croatia,” Plenković told lawmakers presenting the government programme.

“It is obvious that Prime Minister Plenković will find the way to continue to lead centrist policies focused on the EU,” said political analyst Davor Gjenero. “I think there will be no major change of public policies. Croatia remains stable as the state advocating more Europe.”

“It very much looks like a continuity government, both in terms of its composition and policy priorities, although a slight shift to the right is possible in some areas,” said Andrius Tursa, the advisor for Central and Eastern Europe at the advisory firm Teneo.

“In foreign policy, an HDZ-led government would maintain a strong pro-Western, pro-Ukraine stance,” Tursa said, adding that the greatest challenge for the new government will be to tackle corruption, which negatively affects the business environment.

The European Union nation of 3.8 million people is struggling with corruption, a labour shortage, the highest inflation rate in the eurozone and tensions over immigration.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)