Pusić discusses tapping into EU funding with Budget and Financial Programming Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski

Lewandowski said it was crucial that Croatia create preconditions for high fund absorption, adding that he was optimistic about that. “There are 13.7 billion euros available to Croatia for the 2014-2020 period,” Lewandowski said.

Pusić said it was important that the financial means were guaranteed, stressing that we needed to work on increasing the absorption capacity, as thus far we had not taken advantage of all that had been available to us. It is important to have big national projects, but also a tight local-level network of people, so that projects could be organized both on the regional and local level. In regard to technical assistance programmes, Pusić agreed that rational budget management was crucial, which these programmes could help us with.

The two officials concurred that Croatia and Poland, where Lewandowski is from, had had similar experiences – from the social system in the recent past to the shipbuilding issues during the negotiations process, although in different economic circumstances.

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