PM Milanovic: Everything the govt does is a reform

Everything the government does is a reform, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Monday responding to reporters who asked what the reform package the government had sent to the European Commission in Brussels contained.

Efforts to ensure stable business operations in Petrokemija (the Kutina-based artificial fertiliser company), and arranging for severance packages for hundreds of workers are part of our reform efforts, Milanovic said after meeting with Petrokemija's management board.

All previous governments avoided that issue, like those who "want to immediately go to snap elections," Milanovic said, adding that it was absolutely obvious that "they lost the elections."

According to Milanovic, reforms are ongoing and Croatia's public administration doesn't have a surplus of employees when compared with other countries, however, the question is how efficient it is.

"We can downsize public administration to a certain measure but we cannot not have a public administration," he said.

Milanovic referred to the national railway operator HZ, which, he claimed, cost the government politically, as evidenced by the narrow victory at yesterday's local elections, which could have been more convincing if the government had avoided reforms.

Asked whether the government's proposed reforms would be sufficient to avoid EU sanctions, he said that there was no way sanctions would be imposed and that the bureaucratic pressure from Brussels to accelerate reforms was fertile ground for extreme leftists and rightists.

(Hina) sp

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