{"id":415991,"date":"2025-01-13T12:27:40","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T11:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/01\/13\/trump-croato-milanovic-presidente\/"},"modified":"2025-01-13T13:40:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T12:40:21","slug":"croatias-trump-milanovic-confirmed-as-president-of-the-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/01\/13\/croatias-trump-milanovic-confirmed-as-president-of-the-republic\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Croatia’s Trump’ Milanovi\u0107 confirmed as president of the Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – In Croatia, outgoing President Zoran Milanovi\u0107 overwhelmingly won <\/strong>the presidential elections runoff<\/a>, inflicting a significant defeat on challenger Dragan Primorac and, by extension, on Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic’s party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), of which Primorac is an expression. Yesterday (Jan. 12), at the polls, the Social Democrat Milanovi\u0107 won 78 percent of the vote, leaving the conservative candidate with a meager\u00a022 percent.<\/p>\n

Milanovi\u0107, elected for the first time in 2020<\/strong> and already prime minister from 2011 to 2016<\/strong>, was widely favored, as certified in\u00a0the first round<\/a> on Dec. 29, in which he came within a whisker of the 50 percent threshold\u00a0that would have decreed his victory. Primorac got 19.3 percent of the vote. Even\u00a0the latest polls ahead of the second round gave the conservative candidate less than 30 percent, while the outgoing president over 70 percent support.<\/p>\n

\"Andrej<\/a>
Croatian prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Zagreb, the president of the Republic mostly has a ceremonial function. However, he is also the head of the armed forces and coordinates the country’s foreign policy with the government. However, in a post-election results speech, Milanovi\u0107 said his victory is “a message about the situation in the country,<\/strong> for those who need to hear it.” An attack on Plenkovic’s government because the almost plebiscite support for Milanovi\u0107 “is not just support for me,” the president-elect continued. On the other hand, the HDZ in recent years has been embroiled in a series of corruption scandals which have led to the resignation or dismissal of more than thirty ministers, <\/strong>most recently the health care incumbent Vili Bero\u0161<\/strong>, who was jailed last November.<\/p>\n

Although supported by a center-left coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Milanovi\u0107 has adopted a\u00a0very aggressive rhetoric toward both the European Union and NATO<\/strong> and, over the years, increasingly repositioned himself in a populist direction. He even earned the nickname ‘Croatia’s Trump’. In the span of his first term, he openly criticized government-approved restrictions during the Covid pandemic, opposed the reception of migrants\u00a0into the country, and strenuously defended the Croatian police force accused of violent rejections on the Balkan route.<\/p>\n

The president is in stark contrast with\u00a0the government regarding\u00a0military support for Ukraine<\/strong> and Zagreb’s commitment to the Atlantic Alliance. Last October, he spoke out against sending Croatian military personnel to Germany who, in Plenkovic’s plans, were to participate in a training operation for Ukrainian troops. A move that Milanovi\u0107 said could have led Croatia into conflict with Russia. “As long as I am president, Croatian soldiers will not fight other people’s wars,” he reaffirmed during his election campaign. Last spring, the president also\u00a0spoke out against Sweden and Finland joining NATO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The outgoing president, supported by a center-left coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP), won 78 percent of the vote in the runoff against conservative candidate Dragan Primorac. In recent years, Milanovi\u0107 has embraced a very aggressive rhetoric toward both the EU and NATO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":415432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[26944,30160,29435],"class_list":["post-415991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-croatia-en","tag-milanovic-en","tag-election-presidential-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415991"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416009,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415991\/revisions\/416009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}