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In need of Moral Authority, by Natasha Srdoc, December 7, 2007
Flat-Taxers Show the Way, by Natasha Srdoc, May 16, 2007
Croatia Resists Reform, by Natasha Srdoc, February 23, 2007
Southeast European Times
Albanian government approves 10% flat tax, by Jonilda Koci, June 4, 2007
In Need of Moral Authority
07 December 2007 Whoever takes power, HDZ or SDP,
Croatia's
next government must fight corruption fearlessly - or prepare to be
judged a failure. By Natasha Srdoc in Rijeka
Two weeks after Croatians voted in a general election on November 25,
Croatian democracy is ailing.
Voters' split decision has given neither of the two main parties
a clear mandate to govern, but this is not the problem. The illness afflicting
Croatian democracy is official corruption, and the parties alone have the power
to put things right.
Voters saw last month's election as an opportunity to elect a
government with a greater degree of moral authority to govern than the last one,
led by the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). They made it clear that "corruption and the economy" was their chief concern. Their
concerns led to a surge in support for the opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Now, whichever of these two parties finds a way to power must reckon
with voters' concerns. They must reckon with the need for better
governance, greater transparency and less dirty dealing - and they must
react positively.
In the wake of polling margin of just 10 parliamentary seats separates the
HDZ and SDP. The HDZ controls 66
seats, five of which represent Croatian diaspora voters, and the SDP controls 56. Since neither party claims enough
seats to form a government outright, both aim to haggle their way into power.
Sadly there is a great risk that, amid the haggling, the interests of
every voter and of Croatian democracy as a whole will go ignored.
Small parties relish such a chance to play kingmaker. Indeed, some
small parties already have been instrumental in keeping the underdog SDP's hopes alive. Together with its likely
coalition partners, the SDP lays
claim to 67 seats, the same as the HDZ, which so far enjoys additional support
from just one minority member of parliament.
The end game looks likely to be determined by two small parties, the
Croatian Peasants Party (HSS) and the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS).
After campaigning together in an electoral pact, they won six seats and two
seats respectively.
From their current position, these minor players are able to wield an
enormous amount of influence over the country's political future.
Unsurprisingly, in dealing with both the HDZ and SDP,
they are pushing for maximal influence on issues of special interest to their
supporters. They are playing for the best deal.
Croatia
therefore faces an acute risk that the current process of government formation - and dynamics likely to stem from it, which will echo through politics until
the next general election - will undermine an important opportunity.
Special interests and backroom dealing are inevitably a bad combination, and
trust is already running low.
The incumbent HDZ, far more than the SDP,
deserves blame for Croatia's
corruption problem. Ivo Sanader, the prime minister, and his party could emerge
victorious in the end game, but even if he can scrabble together enough seats
in the parliament to secure support, the HDZ arguably lacks the moral authority
to form a new government.
During the past four years of HDZ-led government, high-level corruption
has gone unpunished. Party leaders, having inherited the autocratic structures
previously run by Franjo Tudjman,
Croatia's
authoritarian president during the 1990s, show little actual regard for
transparency, accountability and rule of law. A future HDZ-led government would
therefore face the challenge of clearing the decks, challenging the crony
capitalism on which the party continues to thrive.
The 2007 EU Progress
Report for Croatia
noted that "corruption remains widespread".
"There is a need
for greater efforts to prevent, detect and prosecute corruption. No indictment
or verdict has been issued in any high-level corruption case. The concept of
conflict of interest is little understood. Implementation of the
anti-corruption program lacks strong coordination and efficient non-partisan
monitoring. Corruption at the political, economic and institutional level,
including the judiciary, as well as the general tolerance of petty corruption
remains widespread," the report added, echoing the 2006 EU Progress
Report in a measure of how little change has taken place.
Troublingly for Croatia's
still-young democracy, the HDZ brought its bad habits with it into the recent pre-election
campaign. Ahead of the campaign, the Sanader government placed party loyalists
on the editorial board of HRT, the
public broadcaster, when then took steps to cancel some critical news coverage.
One senior journalist said of the board move that it "pushes HRT back by ten years" - in other
words, back into the Tudjman era from which the HDZ has only partly distanced
itself.
Facing such criticism, the
HDZ's preferred tactic is to wrap itself in the European Union flag, drawing
contrast with the HDZ of the isolated Tudjman era. Indeed, during the campaign the
party released a bizarre television advertisement that included endorsements
for Sanader and the HDZ from European leaders such as Angela Merkel, Bertie
Ahern, Kostas Karamanlis, Jean-Claude Juncker, prime ministers respectively of Germany, Ireland,
Greece and Luxembourg.
Ironically, the video
love letter from Sanader's EU admirers backfired a bit, drawing criticism
from the Croatian Ethical Committee, a state body, for violating electoral
ethical standards by using official visits of foreign leaders for campaigning
purposes.
An equally striking
pre-election move was the government's decision to time its use of public
funds and property to boost loyalty and minimise criticism. So great were the
increases, as noted in the EU Progress Report, that the government risked undermining
its own subsidy reduction plan when it boosted aid to "loss-making
enterprises". The government also issued massive payouts to farmers and Roman
Catholic churches while privatising shares in Croatian Telecom at a discount marketed
explicitly as a way for citizen buyers to turn tidy profits.
If this is not a crisis
in moral authority, what is?
Yet at the same time, the
SDP, which campaigned as the
obvious alternative, has is some ways injured its position since November 25.
Central to the SDP's election campaign was the party's
designation of Ljubo Jurcic as its prime ministerial candidate. Jurcic, a
former minister of economy who participated in the SDP-led
government of 2000-2003, was widely regarded as clean choice. His reputation
for getting things done and his untainted record, which included the first
privatisation phase of INA, the state-owned energy company, attracted
anti-corruption voters.
Jurcic's demotion
after the election, from prime ministerial candidate to deputy prime
ministerial candidate, is distinctly awkward. In his place, the sudden ascent
to the top spot by Zoran Milanovic, the young SDP
president, increases risks that the party, endeavouring to form a government
with HSS-HSLS backing, will barter away some of its developing reformist principles.
A young generation of SDP supporters, more inclined to embrace market
reforms, has been shifting the party toward the centre, away from the left. If
this movement within the party prevails, the party's ex-communist old
guard could lose more influence, allowing the SDP
to become more effective force for reform.
Today, as inter-party
negotiations continue, the most pressing risk for the SDP
as an reformist force is that Milanovic will cut deals with the HSS-HSLS that
fly in the face of good sense, crippling the next government from the start.
Nacional,
a weekly magazine, reported that the HSS-HSLS' conditions
for forming a government include state subsidies worth 24bn kunas (3.3bn euros)
for agriculture, investing in 100,000 small farms, increasing the minimum
pension to 1,500 kunas (205 Euros), financial decentralization and
implementation of a plan to establish an economic zone in the Adriatic. Threatening
to generate intense controversy, the HSS-HSLS is also reported to be demanding
a 10-year ban on selling land and real estate to foreigners.
Such
costs would be unbearably high for Croatia's economy, which is
already much less competitive than it should be.
The HDZ and the SDP
should both reject them, on principle. Any government formed by
bartering the future of citizens for the interests of politicians will continue
the trend of instability and unaccountability.
Business Insight Comment: Flat-Taxers Show the Wayhttp://www.birn.eu.com/en/1/140/3060/?tpid=7
Southeast Europe is learning what star
reformers already know - that lower, simpler taxes boost competitiveness.
By Natasha Srdoc-Samy in Zagreb
May 16, 2007
It started in Estonia.
In 1994, the government of Mart Laar, already proven as one of central and
eastern Europe's most daring reformers, instituted a flat tax. The idea was
simple: no matter how much people earned, they paid the same income tax, and it
was relatively low at 26 per cent.
The idea was not new in theory; the flat tax concept was first proposed 25
years ago by the American economists Alvin Rabushka and Robert Hall. But it was
brand new in practice, and it worked. Simple taxes, easy to pay and difficult
to evade, boosted Estonia's competitiveness, lured foreign investment and
helped make the Baltic republic Europe's fastest growing economy.
There is much for the economic reformers of southeast Europe
to learn from eastern Europe's great success stories, and this is among the
greatest.
So it is surprise to hear Ivan Suker, Croatia's finance minister,
describing his country's tax system as "perfect". Take a look. Croatia hits
its taxpayers with heavy rates such as a 45 per cent marginal income tax and 20
per cent corporate tax and, in the process, entangles them in one of the
region's most complicated tax codes.
Meanwhile elsewhere in eastern Europe a flat tax revolution is afoot. It is no
longer enough to harmonise tax codes with European Union expectations. Even
longtime EU member states themselves are being forced to scale down against
more competitive tax regimes to the east, or risk losing business. In an
increasingly borderless Europe, this struggle
to attract investment and yield growth is constant and real.
On tax, Croatia
is a slow learner. Serbia
(14 per cent flat tax on personal income and 10 per cent corporate income tax),
Montenegro (9 per cent flat
tax on corporate income) and Romania
(16 per cent flat tax on personal and corporate income) have bought in to the
flat tax idea, and the list of converts is growing rapidly.
On January 1 of this year, Macedonia
adopted a 12 per cent flat tax on personal and corporate income and plans to cut
this to 10 per cent in 2008. On July 1, Montenegro is due to institute a
flat tax of 15 per cent on personal income, lowering it to 12 per cent in 2009
and 9 per cent in 2009. In Albania,
members of parliament are weighing the possibility of a 10 per cent flat tax on
personal and corporate income.
Bulgaria,
too, may join the fray. Flat tax proponents there are preparing to hold a major
conference, citing concerns that Bulgaria may lose out on investments unless it
drops its 24 per cent marginal income tax rate and 15 per cent corporate tax
rate ?? already well below Croatian levels.
Foreign investment is not the only consideration. Flat taxes also carry a
promise to free up economies for growth, by forcing gray economic activity into
the legitimate market and simplifying collection. Economic activity increases,
and so does honest reporting of income, while tax evasion drops. The result has
been, in all countries that have implemented flat taxes so far, steady or
increased tax revenue within the first year.
In a region like southeast Europe, such a
change should be welcome. Countries of the region are challenged by corruption,
inconsistent implementation of laws, high volumes of unregistered trade and low
protection of property rights. Flat taxes help counteract such problems by
closing loopholes and unmasking evasion techniques.
Under such circumstances, conservatism is the enemy of prosperity. It is in
this way that Croatia's
robust ties with "old Europe" are
proving to be a disadvantage. Yes, investment from EU countries such as Austria
continues to play a crucial part in Croatian economic recovery. No, we should
not import the excessive economic, regulatory and tax conditions that EU-based
companies are so evidently keen to flee.
Yet a characteristically conservative verdict on Croatia's
tax system came at a conference on tax policy held last month in Zagreb, as reported in Austria's Der Standard. Participants
concluded that Croatia's tax
administration is "almost" on par with Austria's. But they failed to note
is that Austria's
heavyweight tax system is nothing to emulate. Indeed, it is currently in
retreat, having recently reduced its corporate tax rate from 35 to 26 per cent,
under pressure from neighbouring Slovakia's 19 per cent rate.
At the conference, Nadan Vidosevic, chairman of Croatia's conservative Chamber of
Commerce made a passionate case for stability instead of reform, valuing
stability and predictability above all. Suker agreed. But stability is only
helpful once a system is made competitive, and Croatia is not there yet. How else
to explain the under supply of greenfield
investments and the accordingly high rate of unemployment, 18 per cent?
Suker blames this on the war, whose influence distinguishes former Yugoslav
economies from other transition economies in eastern Europe. But his
explanation falls short.
Even western Germany, with
its cities and industries utterly devastated after the Second World War, rose
from ashes within a decade to become one of Europe's
strongest economies. Economic freedom plus foreign investment did the trick. Croatia has
already had longer than a decade to rebuild. It has achieved much, but as time
drags on, references to yesterdays' suffering increasingly sound like
throw-away excuses for today's unimaginative governance.
Some southeast European countries are learning to look forward more daringly,
as Estonia
once did. The race is on. Let Croatia
and other reform laggards take note.
COMMENT: Croatia Resists Reformhttp://www.birn.eu.com/en/1/140/3056/?tpid=7
Natasha Srdoc-Samy
23 02 2007 Reforms are starting to lag, and the country's leaders
are loathe to admit it.
By Natasha Srdoc-Samy (Balkan Insight, 23 Feb 07)
On the long and winding road of post-socialist
economic transition, Croatia
has often outpaced other countries in southeast Europe.
Yet now, just when it should be roaring ahead as a magnet for investment in the
region, Croatia
has reached a crossroads between rhetorical fantasy and economic reality.
Politicians in Zagreb
have a habit of describing as a foregone conclusion the country's future within
the European Union and NATO. But critical observers cannot help noticing that,
increasingly, the facts show a country that, in critically important ways,
resists the reforms it needs to go all the way.
External variables such as the European Union's enlargement fatigue are a factor, but there is trouble within as well. Far
more important to Croatian citizens are realities on the ground, and these,
according to a series of highly influential international indexes and reports,
including the EU's own annual Progress Report, are troubling.
Reforms in Croatia are starting to lag, and
the country's leaders are loathe to admit it.
The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal's
recent Index of Economic Freedom rated Croatia
109th out of 157 countries worldwide - a pitiful 37th out
of 41 nations in the region of Europe.
The index, which scores economic freedom according to
an exacting set of objective criteria, described Croatia as 55 per cent economically
free, calling it "mostly unfree".
In matters of property rights, rule of law, corruption
and freedom from government, the index called Croatia "repressed".
Ratings for investment freedom, labour freedom, and
business freedom were "mostly unfree". Financial freedom scored a bit better
- "moderately free" - while trade
freedom, monetary freedom and fiscal freedom were deemed "mostly free".
The
index's criticisms confirmed what other recent analyses from the World Bank,
European Union and others also indicate. If Croatia truly intends to scrap its
twin legacies of socialist and authoritarian rule, there is much work to do.
Faced
with this flood of concern from genuine advocates of freedom and prosperity
worldwide, one might expect elected policymakers in Zagreb to respond soberly, with fresh,
sincere commitments to make life easier for businesses and families.
Instead,
Croatia's
government has thrown itself into advanced spin mode. Ivo Sanader, the prime
minister, went on record
rejecting the data published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street
Journal.
Likewise,
his government pooh-poohed
the results of the World Bank's 2006 Doing
Business report, and spun the EU's annual
Progress Report, prompting The Wall
Street Journal to publish a rebuttal titled "Croatian spin doctors".
Last
month, when The Economist published an online report calling Croatia
the "soggy bottom" of Europe, a place where "nobody wants to upset the
murky and
convenient status quo", the government quickly dismissed
it as untrue.
This zeal for manipulating the facts only sets back
the stated goal of a government whose ultimate policy focus is full membership
of the Euro-Atlantic alliance. Indeed, it is reminiscent of how communists in Zagreb once fielded
criticism.
This must stop. A lack of candour inhibits freedom -
and freedom is what is at stake, most critically in the economic sphere. The
reports from the EU and Heritage Foundation elaborate usefully on this point.
The threat to freedom does not end with economy alone.
It begins there. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning free market economist
who died late last year, called economic freedom a prerequisite for political
freedom. He was right, and political leaders forget his teaching at their
peril.
Croatia's
leaders, however, have learned to insulate themselves institutionally from
criticism. Sanader has invited the Croatian Chamber of Commerce and National
Competitiveness Board to review and respond to the Index of Economic
Freedom. It looks good, but in fact he can rely on these institutions to
reject the index's findings.
The Chamber of Commerce is still financed by the
government, which mandates obligatory membership for every company operating in
Croatia;
the National Competitiveness Board, founded by USAID, meanwhile, consists of
government officials, trade unions representatives and privileged
representatives of business such as state-owned companies and large private
firms holding state contracts.
By contrast, independent businessmen who speak
publicly about corruption face the risk of open reprimand from figures of
political authority including the prime minister himself. The effect is to
discourage transparency and freedom of speech when Croatia's government needs private
individuals, journalists and civic leaders to highlight areas requiring
improvement. Independent voices are more likely to call a spade a spade.
Responding to the recent flood of criticism, the
government boasts that Croatia
receives "high ratings from all international institutions, such as the
European Commission and International Monetary Fund".
In fact, the EU Progress Report issues a jarring verdict that Croatia has
"no overall strategic framework" for reform.
It goes on to
describe an environment ripe for corruption. Croatia lacks "clear and
transparent rules and procedures with regard to elections and the forming of
governments at the local level". The country remains "still some way
from enjoying an independent, impartial, transparent and efficient judicial
system", and "allegations of corruption remain uninvestigated and
corrupt practices usually go unpunished". An additional European
Commission report cites "major interference of politics with [the] judiciary".
In any such atmosphere, risks of corruption loom
large.
And yet post-socialist reform need not be murky. Mart
Laar, the former prime minister of eastern Europe's star performer, Estonia,
offers simple advice, "The first step in fighting corruption is not to be
corrupt yourself." Are Croatia's
leaders ready to heed it? To see Estonia's astounding rate of
reform-driven economic growth, they should be.
Croatia
appears to be unprepared to clean up its own affairs, and yet a cleanup is
urgently needed, for the state retains an alarming share of overall economic
activity.
Government expenditure is worth 52 per cent of the
country's gross domestic product, and yet, in some cases, it uses its position
to crowd out private initiative. According to a report from the business news
web portal business.hr, a substantial minority of public contracts,
worth 146 million kuna, has been awarded without public tenders.
The consequent lack of room for private initiative and
other hindrances to economic freedom need challenging, or they will only grow.
Croatia's
Adriatic Institute for Public Policy last October co-hosted the Libertas Debate
Series at the European Parliament with Roger Helmer, a British member of the
European Parliament. There, issues of alleged corruption were raised in the
cases of two former and two current government ministers.
In the wake of the meetings, the Adriatic Institute
sent enquiries regarding the cases to Croatia's government, along with
follow-up correspondence from Helmer. The enquiries went unanswered, in
violation of Croatia's
Freedom of Information Act. The unspoken message was one of contempt for the
dignitaries present at the meetings, but more importantly for citizens and
taxpayers.
It is time for the EU, World Bank, USAID and others
who grant or loan substantial sums of money to Croatia to reexamine their
approach. Too often, their funds contribute to systemic inertia when a change
of course is needed. Croatia
needs an approach more directly emphasising accountability and transparency.
Greater economic freedom should be a condition of
future transfers of international support, with greatest emphasis on rule of
law, protection of property rights, judicial reform and the complete,
transparent privatisation of state-owned enterprises.
Such measures might rouse the government from its
current state of denial, and eventually help Croatia to establish the
foundations of a freer, more prosperous market economy.
Voice of America
13. lipnja - Dan porezne slobode u Hrvatskoj
International Leaders Summit o primjeni trzisnih reformi u Hrvatskoj, by Andrea Tadic, May 31, 2005
Samy: S EU ili bez nje, Hrvatska mora provesti trzisne reforme, by Andrea Tadic, June 3, 2005
Matt Sertic: Hrvatska treba pojednostaviti 'pravila igre', by Andrea Tadic, June 5, 2005
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