Croatia's Isolated Islands Hope Law Will Ease Plight

Faced with such problems as an ageing population, the flight of young people, patchy healthcare and the over-dominance of tourism , the procedure is starting for the drafting of Croatia's new Law on Islands, designed to address some of these issues.

An umbrella network of NGOs and individuals called the Island Movement says the new legislation needs to create a framework under which different bodies can ease the problems caused by the islands' isolation from each other.

Croatia has a lot of islands - 78 in all - and their popularity with the wealthy yacht crowd and with tourists in general grows steadily each year.

Travel magazine pictures of golden sands, azure skies and equally azure waters evoke an image of paradise - but the reality for most people living there is often different.

A representative of the movement who is part of an expert group working on the draft, Andreja Baraba, told BIRN that the islands face "a complex problem" - and the new law must create a framework to address it.

"As things stand now, the islands are 'alive' for just two months during summer tourist season," she said, referring to their growing dependence on tourism for survival.

Although the media often focus on weak connections between islands and the mainland as the key issue, this was not "the problem number one", she said.

"The law should work in the direction of making islands self-sustainable, so that they are less dependent on the mainland in general," Baraba emphasised.

However, she conceded that poor connnections was certainly an issue. "In Solta, I can see Hvar with my own eyes, but to get there, I need to take a ferry to Split [on the mainland] and from there take another ferry to Hvar," she noted.

Baraba explained that...