PM says family is Croatian society's key unit

Demographic revitalisation is this government's most complex task, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Monday at a session of the Demographic Revitalisation Council, calling on all stakeholders at all levels of government to jointly reduce the regional differences affecting families' quality of life.

"I advocate defining good comprehensive support to young people, parents and families to facilitate the balancing of parenting and work, while at the same time changing quality of life in our country," he said, adding that family was the key unit of Croatian society and that it should be bolstered.

It is up to us to engage young people in Croatia and give them hope, to draw expatriates back to Croatia, and to inspire second or third generation Croats to invest and come back to the old country, Plenkovic said.

Solutions are not in individual measures but their synergy in the creation of a positive climate for a population revival, and a change of climate requires financial stability and economic growth, he added.

Croatia's population situation has been in the public eye for a long time, notably recently as 100 children a born every day while 150 people die, as a result of which parts of Croatia have no inhabitants, Plenkovic said, adding that the free movement of workers in the EU had enabled many people to seek their chance in other member states. He was hopeful they would come back.

That is why a significant part of the population measures, aside from social ones, will focus on digitisation so that government bodies are in the service of citizens, he said, adding that the government was already implementing some population measures.

Future measures will focus on equal opportunities for men and women on the labour market, more flexible work will enable families to balance work and family obligations without renouncing part of their income, and work will continue on the creation of social measures for low-income families, he said.

"Those families must be under special government protection. We must continue to facilitate the housing issue and cut costs related to raising children... We should pay more importance to regulating work on Sundays. It's extremely important to introduce fair wages for work on Sundays and holidays, which will directly impact tens of thousands of women of fertile age who work, for instance, in retail," he said

We wish to introduce new technologies to simplify all administrative procedures involving parents and children as well as to introduce more flexible working hours by amending the Labour Act and the Health Insurance Act, Plenkovic said.

We wish to continue to improve the protection of pregnant women in the workplace as well as regulate rights during artificial insemination, including co-financing, he added.

He went on to say that the government also wanted to subsidise housing loans and continue with the education reform so that it was in line with labour market requirements.

Plenkovic recalled that the Ministry of Demography, Family, Youth and Social Policy formed a task force in April to work on a demographic revitalisation strategy and said that, with today's meeting and the contribution of President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, who was in attendance, as well as of his ministers, they wanted to help turn the negative trends around in the medium and long terms.

"And we all have both the will and the desire to do our best for the demographic revitalisation of the country," he said.

Text: Hina

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