Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic has arguably never been more powerful than he is today. In his eight years in office, he has steered Croatia away from Russian influence and aligned it squarely with its partners in the European Union and NATO. Compared to Croatia’s multiyear recession in the 2010s, he now presides over one of the highest GDP growth rates in the EU. And in April, despite high inflation and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Plenkovic bucked the anti-incumbent trend that has dominated voting in 2024 by securing a fourth straight victory in parliamentary elections for his center-right party, the Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, and its allied parties.
And yet, the HDZ-backed candidate in Croatia’s presidential election, the first round of which takes of place in December, looks set to lose to incumbent President Zoran Milanovic. A former prime minister himself, Milanovic reentered the political sphere to run successfully for his first term in 2019. Since then, he has seemed determined to ensure that Plenkovic is not the only game in town.
The two men could not be more different. Milanovic’s populist nationalist appeal has won him the nickname “the Croatian Trump.” By contrast, Plenkovic has positioned himself as an effective technocratic leader since coming to power in 2016. To be sure, Croatia has had its share of tumult in that time. In 2017, Agrokor, then the country’s largest private company and the biggest employer in the Balkans, nearly collapsed, which would have threatened Croatia’s entire economy. It was only saved by government intervention. Then in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, two earthquakes caused billions of dollars of damage. Subsequently, as elsewhere, inflation soared, prompting the government to cut taxes on food and heating, while also freezing the price of electricity and dozens of supermarket products.