Šipić presents Croatia's demographic revitalization program in Brussels

Both Croatian and Europe as a whole have witnessed a devastating negative demographic trend in recent decades. At the start of its most recent mandate the incumbent Croatian Government formed a Demography and Immigration Ministry in a bid to tackle the problem.

Demography and Immigration Minister Ivan Šipić presented Croatia's efforts to improve its demographic situation at a meeting of a European Parliament intergroup in Brussels on Tuesday: "Without demographic policy there will not be a European continent, European Union or Croatia. Because we know that fertility rates are dropping and that we're losing a sizeable portion of our population in the European Union. We want to emphasize that it would be desirable for every country in Europe to have a dedicated ministry for demographics, just as the Croatian Government established a Ministry for Demography and Immigration, the only one of its kind in the European Union."

The Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Šuica, said that work is currently underway to establish a special European agency for demography: "Ultimately, our final goal, and this is something we are working on with the Croatian government and our Prime Minister, is to try to establish a European agency for demography where experts, demographers, sociologists and others would deal with demography and where we would try to understand this phenomenon a little better, because we would not want to wake up in ten years’ time and say - we did nothing."

Some critics note however, that all the while government is talking about reversing negative demographic trends, stimulating the return of expats and encouraging young people to stay and live in their hometowns in Croatia, it is also cynically allowing a flood of cheap labour into the country and is also failing to do anything concrete to stem the flow of illegal migrants into Croatia.

Source: HRT