President Milanović at “Big Plans Day” Conference: We are in difficult months and years, the recession is starting in Germany and some other European countries
The President of the Republic participated in the 15th edition of the “Big Plans Day” Conference [Dan velikih planova] organized by the Lider weekly, where he spoke about the geopolitical situation in his presentation entitled “Global political risks and their impact on the Republic of Croatia.”
“China is a factor of stability, but also of instability. The USA does not want to accept it as a new competitor. Since the collapse of the Cold War order, America has dominated the world, but during that period the Russians and Americans respected and feared each other. The agreements that were signed at the time show how much fear and respect they had for each other. Those agreements, such as the arms control agreement, were very important for stability and predictability in the world,” he said, adding that everything changed with the disruption of that order and nothing is the same anymore.
Arguing that China has grown from a backward and agrarian economy into a great economic, technological and thermonuclear power, the President of the Republic said that it is only a matter of when and in which year China will be on par with the Americans and Russians in terms of arsenal and its lethality. “We need to see if and how it will affect their foreign policy, which has been, in the military sense, very defensive until now. China has attained a certain kind of stability, predictability and high profitability for many products, which suited the Americans because it allowed them huge profits. Years later, China has grown into an uncontrollable power. How can we live with that now?,” asked President Milanović.
Regarding the Balkans, he said that there is no geopolitics there, given that the region has no influence on the balance of power in the world. Speaking about Croatia, the President of the Republic mentioned the “Z-4” agreement on the partition of Croatia, which fortunately was stopped by the Croatian Army and the then state leadership. “That agreement was written in the Russian Embassy in Zagreb. It was written jointly by the Russian and American ambassadors, the European Union and the UN. That was the world at that time,” he emphasized and added that later, as a small and tough nation, we fought for what we have today – and what we have is better than ever in history. “It is not ideal because we are not fully the masters of our destiny. However, we consciously and rationally brought ourselves to it. This way, it is easier for us to deal with the challenge that is already here, and that is a changed world,” he concluded.
Speaking about Croatia’s place in a globalized world, President Milanović said: “Croatia is very dependent on the EU. I will not talk about monetary policy because we no longer have it. This was inevitable and I consider it neither a success nor a failure, but a given that the Czech Republic and Hungary are resisting. I say this from the perspective of the stability of their national currencies and interest rates on housing loans, which are lower in the Czech Republic than in Italy or Greece, which are in the euro zone. Therefore, the euro is not the sole criterion and there are others that the markets and investors recognize.”
The President singled out the situation in Germany, which is important for the Croatian economy. “We are in difficult months and years. The recession is starting in Germany and in some other European countries. This is their global competitiveness problem, but the consequences will be felt here as well. We cannot be much more competitive than we are,” he said.
Commenting on the European Union, the President said that it is becoming a second-rate player because it is not the one who decides, nor does it have key technologies and supply routes. “It is beyond us, we live in that world. Just when we started to get acclimatized, new changes started in the world. In this situation, we should be on the side of our family, our small, beautiful and relatively well-organized state, in our heads and in our hearts,” President Milanović concluded.
Welcome remarks to the participants of the 15th edition of the “Big Plans Day” Conference were given by the Editor-in-chief of the Lider weekly Miodrag Šajatović, and the President of the Croatian Employers’ Association and President of the Management Board of Pliva Mihael Furjan. President Milanović was accompanied at the event by the Special Adviser to the President of the Republic for the Economy Velibor Mačkić.
PHOTO: Office of the President of the Republic of Croatia / Dario Andrišek