ROLE OF DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES ON THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA

The regional development issue is a relatively new area of public policy, which was not developed in many countries, especially the transition countries, such as the Republic of Croatia. The regional development policy represents one of the EU policies, known as Cohesion policy, and provides financial support, through the EU Structural Funds, to EU Member States (hereinafter: MS), in particular the so-called cohesion ones and the new MS, in order to stimulate economic growth and sustainable development of certain EU regions that are below certain GDP standards or are in a transition phase. The absorption capacity of EU funds requires that the administrative system of a particular MS is in the position to receive and manage effectively, as well as evalute the use of the EU funds and ensure that they will be used in a transparent and cost effective manner by the final beneficiaries. This requires institutional building and capacity building, in particular in the new MS. In recent years, the Republic of Croatia invests considerable funds in the development of its institutional framework for an efficient regional development, as well as in human resources development, and it can be said that currently it exists a certain number of development agencies which have acquired know-how in the development programming and planning through EU funds experiences and relevant practises that they have shared with the EU. However, it is evident that problems in the identification of "real development projects" still exist. It can be said that past projects that are applied and implemented did not obtain the desired results on regions development. Therefore, possible models of action and the role of development agencies in the future regional development of Croatia, as key actors for the countrie's economic development in this pre-accession period and their inevitable impact on increased absorption capacity of EU funds will be presented in this article. These proposals include assumptions under which County Development Agencies (hereinafter: CDA's) will be financed and accredited, as well as their action supervised, and could be applicable in the second half of 2010 after the adoption of the National Strategy for Regional Development (hereinafter: NSRD).