There is a whole industry in Croatia specializing in EU money extraction. Hundreds of agencies writing proposals to get grants for their clients and taking their cut. Tons of those are grifts with money directly landing into people's pockets, seaside villas being bought, hotels being made. It's so blatant that politicians accuse each other for not extracting as much money as they’ve could. After decades of blatant stealing EPPO (European Public Prosecutors Office) got involved. When they go for small fish that’s fine, but when they start investigating government politicians they (government) take the case from them and those guys get a slap on the wrist. There are just so many cases that EPPO can do only a fraction of them. Terrible situation, and I don’t think it’ll change because EU doesn’t give too much of a care about a small country like that. And it’s not their money in a sense, so they care even less.