Summary: At this time of crisis, the Justice and Peace Commission of the Croatian Conference of Bishops wishes to express concern about the conditions in the Croatian society but also point out the right of citizens to a modern public administration and an efficient public sector of the economy. In this way, the Commission is attempting to make its modest contribution to the debate on the safeguarding of the public interest and common good, desiring the government and public administration to be of service to citizens and encourage economic development and employment. A highly educated and independent public administration could become a stable and loyal element of a democratic society and contribute to helping the public sector grow into a competitive part of the economy and thus become, all together, a guarantee for a more complex society and a more just state.

The unpleasant scenes from the island of Brač and other areas where workers are losing their jobs prompt us, the laity and clergy of this commission, to speak out regarding difficulties about which we have often refrained from speaking. We hesitated, although we felt that justice and peace are in question in cases of failed businesses and worker layoffs, because it was not always bad management but instead the desire to become rich by firing people and selling company property. When we attempted to understand whether this was unilateral injustice, we encountered the silence of institutions or became lost in the furor of the media. At the same time, we knew of the experiences of others, who with workers’ collectives and social enterprises are saving companies and thus effectively promoting gift and gratuitousness as possible parts of the “real” economy (see Caritas in Veritate, 34-39).
The situation in our homeland today is not good. Entire professions and centuries of knowledge (textile industries, shipbuilding etc.) are collapsing and there is growing unemployment, especially among the young and educated population, large public and private debt, corruption, trading in influence and public rights, and failure of the educational system to adapt to the needs of the times and market competition, all of which are contributing to a sense of despair that we did not know even at the most difficult times during the struggle for the defense and liberation of the homeland. Thus, the right to work largely remains empty words on paper, as is education for entrepreneurship. This bleak reality, after each of the elections, changes in hundreds of administrative personnel and public enterprises, largely contributes to the paralysis of the country for many months before and after elections. It is as if the country stops, with a negative impact on citizens’ rights and economic activity. Such a situation is not, however, impossible to change. Our country has numerous advantages and uncommon wealth, from creative and hardworking people to unique natural resources and a good infrastructure, of which the first, second and third represent the comparative and competitive advantages of a democratic Croatia in Europe and the world.

Therefore, we believe that we may no longer remain silent when specific people and their families, their hard work and misery, as well as the natural wealth of our country, in short the highest values of our time and land, are in question. We especially cannot remain silent regarding two issues that trouble the Croatian society and dictate peace today in our homeland but also justice tomorrow, for future generations. On the one side is the public interest, i.e., public administration and public enterprises, and on the other are Croatian publically-owned goods and natural wealth, both renewable and nonrenewable.

1. Public Interest and the Common Good. Pluralistic and democratic Croatia inherited a large and often inefficient public sector from the communist regime. Its privatization occurred, unfortunately, at a time when some were defending and liberating the homeland while others were selling and destroying what had formerly been publically-owned companies, cooperatives, banks etc. All this was done in the superficial belief that privatization and “the invisible hand of the market” were the sole criteria, that the state is a priori a bad businessman. It was forgotten that in a democracy, the state, local communities and public institutions must protect the public interest and promote the common good, while the economic sphere is largely the sum of private interests. The neoliberal demand that the basic role of the state is to serve the economy was appeased. It was forgotten that the state must also provide for the public interest and fundamental justice, i.e., the solidarity and equality of citizens, especially in education and healthcare, but must also arbitrate among private interests.
Also neglected was the duty of the state to ensure excellent public administration, especially state, and its independence from executive authority, i.e., Government and political changes. In short, instead of the state obtaining the best and educated personnel and thus achieving the principle of meritocracy, i.e., capable leadership, the path of the previous regime was taken, which meant a partitocracy, i.e., officials acceptable to the party. It was not understood that only excellent and educated leaders of public administration are capable of good management, for the benefit of the citizens and to reform the public sector, and could replace many less educated personnel, which would result in significant savings to the public budget and enterprises. The need for unity in the government administration was not taken into account. Instead, the dissolution of ministries was permitted under the guise of “independent regulatory agencies” (of which there are over 60 today in Croatia), that mutilated the state but multiplied cushy positions. Likewise, the duty of the democratic state to ensure the personal responsibility of a minister was neglected because assistant ministers, on the one hand, just learn what they must do and, on the other hand, politicize the state administration, which should be politically impartial. From the other side, in our country it is unfortunately not sufficiently well known that in many European democracies there is a public sector not only in service areas but also production, which can successfully cope with competition from the private sector, while at the same time ensuring the public, vital interests of the nation and thereby strengthening social interdependence and cohesion. The public sector is not only present in transport and waste disposal, energy and communications but also in water supply and sewage, especially so-called “natural monopolies,” i.e., network systems of national importance and scope. They also include roads and highways, oil and gas pipelines, railways and electricity transmission networks etc., which are vital to every economy for all new investments but also for reducing social inequalities. Of all of this, what should and should not remain in the public sector in Croatia ought to be decided according to the principle of subsidiarity, which is now governing the division of competences between the European Union and Member States, and which sprang up in the bosom of the Catholic Church and its social doctrine more than 80 years ago (the encyclical Quadragesimo anno, 186).
All these issues should be the subject of public debate in our country. Our Commission is taking this opportunity to address the conduct of the public sector, government administration and public enterprises. Politicians are correct when they say that citizens and enterprises are suffering due to poor management, i.e., their social and economic functions. There are, however, the experiences of others, all of which indicate that public management is a special craft, indeed a calling, and like any other it is necessary to be trained for it in advance. It is a special job, on the one side due to the variety of areas, i.e., the objects of public administration, because it concerns a large number of areas, which are not only legal or only economic or only financial but also social and “environmental” and international and urban and rural and industrial and service, while, on the other hand, due to its particular objective, it is about serving the public interest according to the principles of the common good. The public interest is not merely the sum of private interests but more than that, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Private interest is primarily focused on profit, increasingly unleashing unscrupulous profit. Therefore, the knowledge and methods of administering private affairs are neither suitable nor applicable to public affairs.
Citizens, however, are entitled to excellent managers in public administration and public enterprises because these managers have an impact on the freedom of citizens, their rights and possessions. In order to obtain such outstanding “captains” of the public sector, it is necessary to select them through rigorous and demanding competitions and then educate them in many aspects—legal and economic, financial and social, “European,” “environmental” etc. for all the diversity of public activities. Thus educated, career public managers can be allowed to manage administrative units and public enterprises, including administrative courts, and thus protect public administration from the party interests of the executive authorities. Such politically neutral professional public servants, loyal to each legitimate executive authority, can be a guarantee for the legitimacy and permanence of work, and for the fair and efficient administrative services for citizens, the government and state.

2. Croatian natural resources are currently endangered due to negligence by the authorities and neoliberal pressures in the direction of their consumption, destruction and appropriation. They are, in addition to the “natural monopolies,” public enterprises and public media, unfortunately all that remain under public ownership and which somewhat guarantee the sustainable development of Croatia because land and forests, water and sea, arable surfaces and food are the blessings of this country and its only strength before the challenges of the future.
All of the still remaining natural resources and infrastructures, following the collapse of the majority of production activities, are Croatia’s comparative and competitive advantages, of an importance about which every session of Parliament and every legitimate government should be aware. What will the Croatian Government govern for the benefit of citizens and what will the public administration administer if the selling off of these goods continues, when the telecommunications, financial and energy sectors have largely been transferred to capital without roots in the homeland? The few remaining goods are Croatia’s advantages, but advantages about which others are more aware than we are, others who today in the world are renting or buying millions of hectares of land and enormous amounts of water, infrastructures and network systems, as well as islands and seacoasts, because an increasing number of people want to live in comfortable climates.
Therefore, citizens have the right to expect the Croatian Parliament and Government to stop offering those goods, “natural monopolies” and companies for sale or in concession, which Croats can manage themselves—better than today, indeed excellently, if this is wanted—and from which current and future Croatian generations can benefit. Therefore, it is also reasonable to expect that Croatia, the Government signers of contracts with the European Union, should become involved as soon as possible in the promotion of the European values of the dignity of the person and human labor as the basis of this dignity; in the return of the primacy of politics as a “place” and manner of practicing democracy and civil liberties; in the containment of financial capital through taxation of financial transactions and returning finance to the role of service to the economy and public associations; in the struggle against climate change; in the sustainable energy policy of the EU; in the choice of the EU migration policy as the basis not for assimilation but for civil and cultural integration; and, in particular, in the protection of the family as the basis of society and a life of dignity, from its beginning at conception to its natural end.

In conclusion, we call on the Croatian public institutions, from the Parliament and Government to scientific institutions and universities, civic and religious associations, trade unions and parties, to facilitate the public debate of public accountability and, when justified, to declare citizens’ referendums. This is a matter of preserving the basic functions of a democratic state and its cohesive social role. It is also a matter of the permanent goods that this generation has no right to dissolve, destroy or sell off.

Msgr. Vlado Košić, Ph.D.
President of the Justice and Peace Commission
The Croatian Conference of Bishops