- Norberto Paredes @norbertparedes
- BBC News World
4 hours ago
Credit, Getty Images
Ivan Sabolić witnesses how his village is gradually running out of people.
Legrad, located in northern Croatia, almost on the border with Hungary, developed into a successful trading town from the 1480s due to its favorable geographical position.
But today very little remains of those glory days. Of the region’s nearly 3,000 residents recorded in the 2001 census, only about 900 remain today — and the population continues to decline, according to Sabolić, the city’s mayor.
“Many young people have left and worked in Germany, Austria and Slovenia,” he says in an interview with BBC Mundo (the BBC’s Spanish channel). “There aren’t many opportunities, salaries are low and if that doesn’t change, people will keep going.”
Legrad is not an isolated case. In fact, all of the country’s cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Zagreb, are experiencing what experts are calling a “demographic catastrophe”.
More Croatians abroad
Croatia had 4.3 million inhabitants in 2011. Today there are about 3.8 million and the number continues to fall.
According to estimates, the small European country will have 3.4 million inhabitants by 2050. By 2100, that number could drop by another million, the UN warns.
Croatia is facing one of the fastest population declines in the world since its population peaked at 4.78 million in 1991, the year of independence after the collapse of Yugoslavia.
“In the last 20 years, the population has decreased by more than half a million people. According to estimates, more Croatians live abroad today than in their homeland,” emphasizes Monika Komušanac, professor at the Institute for Demography and Croatian Diaspora at the University of Zagreb.
“We are very concerned about Croatia’s demographic future. The current trend could affect the functioning of national public systems, healthcare and pensions, among others,” he adds.
What explains this phenomenon?
The causes of the approaching “demographic catastrophe” in this country on the Balkan Peninsula are manifold.
Credit, Reuters
caption,
The city of Legrad, Croatia
Since the 1980s, the number of births in Croatia has been falling, which, together with a high mortality rate, means that the country’s demographic balance has been negative since 1991: more Croatians are dying than being born.
In 2020, Croatia recorded the worst natural growth rate in its history when there were about 20,000 more deaths than births.
Added to this is the Croatian tradition of migration, whose inhabitants have been looking for better opportunities abroad since the late 15th century.
migration waves
The country’s rate of emigration experienced several peaks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and accelerated again after the First and Second World Wars.
Credit, Getty Images
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House with For Sale sign in Eastern Croatia
After Croatia’s independence, the threat from nationalist groups that supported the creation of a “Greater Serbia” in the early 1990s has again increased the number of displaced people and refugees inside and outside the country.
More recently, emigration received a new impetus with Croatia’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2013.
Since then, more than 263,000 Croatians have left the country, around 33,000 a year.
However, Komušanac says the actual number of people who have emigrated since joining the EU could be “at least doubled” since not everyone who leaves Croatia is officially recorded in national statistics.
Knowing these numbers, by the way, can be even more difficult. Due to the complicated history of the Balkan Peninsula, millions of citizens in the region can obtain passports from neighboring countries, which is particularly attractive when those places are part of the EU, like Croatia or Romania, as it gives them the right to work anywhere. Place that is part of the economic bloc.
Experts estimate that many Croatian passport holders working in other EU countries are likely to be from Bosnia.
What worries Komušanac even more is that almost 60% of migrants are young people aged between 20 and 44.
“We have a labor shortage, our health workers work in other European countries, there are fewer children in schools and more older people, which puts pressure on the social and pension systems,” he explains.
As Legrad was gradually becoming depopulated, Mayor Ivan Sabolić launched a plan last year to attract new residents. The goal is to sell abandoned houses for 1 kuna (equivalent to 14 US dollar cents or 70 R$ cents).
Credit, Reuters
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One of the houses for sale for 70 cents in Croatia
The requirements to buy these houses are: having the financial means to support yourself, being under the age of 40 and committing to live in the place for at least 15 years.
In Croatia, when someone dies without an heir, ownership passes into the hands of the municipality and this “became a problem” for Legrad.
But city officials quickly found people seriously interested in the 19 homes for sale. At the end of May 2022 only one of them was still available.
Financial incentive for returnees
Late last year, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced a new program called “I Choose Croatia” that will offer grants of up to 200,000 kuna ($28,000) to Croatians returning from other EU countries with plans to start their own business in the country US dollars) offers.
But the program did not have the expected success, as reported by RTL, one of the country’s biggest television channels, at the end of April.
Komušanac knows many people in his circle who have left the country and agrees that “for many, finding permanent employment is a big problem”.
From her point of view, however, there are also other triggers that encourage residents to emigrate, such as the “disorder” of Croatian society, which the expert believes is “full of scandals, corruption and nepotism”.
“Young people have lost their idealism, their trust in institutions and society and see no signs of change,” he adds.
In addition, the professor believes that the government’s national population policy, established in 2006, needs to be changed. “The current project proposes very modest support for newborns and does not include support for families with more than one child,” he analyses.
In order to prevent the “demographic catastrophe” from continuing, the mayor of Legrad calls on the central government to encourage foreign immigration to fill jobs and raise wages in order to increase competitiveness compared to the labor markets of other European countries:
“Croats will continue to go to other countries like Germany or Austria because salaries are higher there. If that doesn’t change, we will become a country without young people,” he concludes.
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