Professor Zdravko Petak, a member of the Assembly of TIC and an expert on public policy in Jutarnji List

Zdravko Petak, a professor at the Zagreb Faculty of Political Science, an expert on politics and public sector management, only Croatian participated in a large study funded by eminent German Bertelsmann Foundation and conducted by leading political scientists and political economists of Europe. It includes more than a hundred parameters evaluated the quality of public administration, policies focusing on economic policy and democracy in the 42 OECD member countries and the EU. The survey covered the most developed countries in the world for the first time as the 28th member of the EU affected and Croatia. The study is in the quality of administration and economic policies ranked Croatia to the poorest-only group of 42 countries, while the degree of democracy ranked slightly better, but still behind Mexico or Chile.  

Do you think that the present Government has missed the opportunity to reform and stop the economic downturn? 

- Regardless of the indisputable good intentions of this government, I think it is a strong and essential reform measures in the economic sphere and public administration should withdraw in the first six months of the term, ie until June 2012 If she started now, when he stepped in the second half of the mandate, she decided the large incisions, this coalition would certainly deprive yourself a chance to succeed at the next parliamentary elections. Unless its key people such as the Prime Minister Milanovic and Deputy Prime Minister Pusic do not want to do something that some statesmen did in Europe - pull decisive reform measures that are certain to lead to electoral defeat in modern Croatian history be remembered as an important statesmen. 

When you say that the government should implement major reform measures in the first six months of the term, which accurately measures do you think?

There had to be implemented several key measures. one of them was to go to:

•  rehabilitation of public companies. It should be made so that the system of public companies that is highly wasteful, considering the services provided by generating very high losses, a series of fierce strokes is reduced to an optimal level.
• segment of the state administration, but not to the extent as in public companies. Here's why: when you reject the army, the police, the prison system, the customs duties are in fact a series of defaults and that seriously affects the system of Europeanization, in the civil service remains a relatively small area for reform. The reforms have to be undertaken with agencies and they are not made. They are created with the idea to take part in Affairs of ministries. Agencies certainly make sense and it would be out of mind to the basic form of regulatory agencies lifted. However, there has been their proliferation. In addition, while it did not work, we present Government than the previous ones, after they have been formed, some of the duties that are performed by the ministry was transferred to the agency, while the ministries retained the same number of employees. Their establishment actually increase the number of people in the civil service because the other side of the scale, the number of employees in the ministries, are not decreased. That in the level of central government, should be a major reform in the beginning of the public administration. Research Foundation Bertesmann spent on about 60 parameters effective public administration showed that there was a disastrous low level of competence within the administration and supervision of the agencies. 
• serious interventions in the consolidation of local government