Croatia will receive less funding from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) due to its rapid recovery from the consequences of the coronavirus crisis, according to the updated key for allocating grants to member states published by the European Commission on Thursday.

The Commission published a table according to which Croatia will receive just over 5.5 billion euros in grants from the RRF, whereas 6.3 billion euros had previously been envisaged.

The key for allocating 70 percent of the national grant allocation was based on population, GDP per capita relative to the EU average, and the average unemployment rate in the period 2015-2019 relative to the Union average. For the remaining 30 percent, the real decline in GDP during the coronavirus crisis in 2020 and the overall movement of economic activity in the period 2020-2021 are taken into account.

According to the new key, the difference between the GDP growth estimate in the autumn economic forecast for 2020, which at the time of the adoption of the Regulation was the latest available economic forecast, and the updated data based on the actual movement of GDP in the period 2020-2021 was taken into account.

This resulted in countries that recovered faster than expected according to the autumn 2020 economic forecasts receiving somewhat less, while those with a slower recovery received somewhat more funding.

According to provisional data for Croatia published by Eurostat, the Croatian economy fell by 8.1 percent in 2020, but recovered quickly and recorded GDP growth of 10.2 percent in 2021, which means that already last year the economy exceeded the level from before the coronavirus crisis, while the Commission had expected this to happen only in 2022.

In the autumn economic forecasts, published on 5 November 2020, which served as the basis for the first calculation of national allocations, the Commission estimated that the Croatian economy would fall by 9.6 percent that year, record growth of 5.7 percent in 2021, and growth of 3.7 percent in 2022.

Source: priznajem.hr