croatia: the indirect impact of EU
trade liberalization
“What about
the costs? What about the pollution caused
by environmental exploitation? We too often
see that these costs are being socialized,
while the benefits are being
privatized…”
Ricardo Navarro, former
Friends of the Earth International Chair,
at the Nature for Sale Conference, 2004
During the past decade Croatia has
undergone a dramatic change in its
governance system. The privatization
process has created major challenges for
the Croatian government as they adjust to
the loss of the control measures and
mechanisms they were accustomed to. As a
result of these changes, they rely strongly
on environmental groups to maintain a
certain level of public control over the
environment and environmental
protection.
Its ambition to become a member of the
EU means Croatia has had to change its own
legislation to bring it in line with EU
law, but the results are not always
positive. For example, Croatia is required
to open up important sectors of its economy
to privatization, including the water
sector. There are serious risks to the
uncontrolled privatization of water and
other natural resources. Croatian NGOs have
been questioning the secret take-over of a
wastewater treatment facility for Zagreb
city by the German company RWE. They argue
that the Croatian government itself should
fulfil its responsibility to provide
affordable water and sanitation services to
the people, and protect the
environment.
In the old communist system the State
had full responsibility for the management
of natural resources. While this
regretfully did not always produce the best
outcome, there was at least the basic
presumption that natural resources
management should benefit society as a
whole. Now that resources are increasingly
being privatized, resource management is
solely for corporate profit. The
exploitation of gravel near Zagreb, for
example, has a huge negative impact on the
environment and local communities but
compensation from the companies for the use
of these sorts of public mineral resources
is not yet being passed on.
A plan to expand the transport of oil
over the Adriatic Sea represents another
example of the threats from deregulation
and privatization. The Adriatic Coastline
is an important natural asset for the
Croatian people - the tourism sector in
that region alone generates some 2 billion
dollars per year. However, a major
expansion of an oil terminal in the North
of the Adriatic Sea is planned, allowing
Russian oil to flow via pipelines all the
way to Croatia. The risks are twofold:
ballast water from oil tankers will be a
major cause of environmental degradation,
while an oil spill would mean disaster for
the Croatian environment, biodiversity, the
economy, and the Croatian people as a
whole.
more information:
Green Action/Friends of the
Earth Croatia
