Nobody will lose with a new territorial organisation of Croatia into two statistical regions and the entire country will gain an opportunity to withdraw to the maximum amount from EU structural funds, vice president of the Croatian People's Party (HNS) and Construction Minister Ivan Vrdoljak told a news conference on Wednesday.
Commenting on claims by county prefects from Slavonia that Slavonia will be included in the same region as Zagreb and that it will be in an inferior position compared to Zagreb, Vrdoljak said Slavonia was not in war with Croatia or Zagreb. It is not good to think that if one was given an opportunity the other would lose, and collect cheap political points on that and use that as an alibi for failure to withdraw money from EU funds, Vrdoljak said.
Vrdoljak said he had asked prefects which projects in Slavonia and Baranja could be threatened by the new regional division, but that he did not receive a concrete answer which, as he said, was unacceptable.
HNS vice president and Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic said that by dividing Croatia into two regions, the government wanted to enable all parts of Croatia to be able to equally use EU funds under the most favourable conditions
