In the meeting, AmCham presented the position paper „State of Play of Digitization in Croatia and Development of Artificial Intelligence“, which highlights the importance of digitalization for advancement and prosperity of Croatian citizens and economy. The paper accentuates that Croatia needs to more strongly contribute to the shaping of the European union budget for the financial period 2021-2027, to make more funds available for investing in artificial intelligence, digitalization and other advanced technologies.

The position paper “Recommendations for the Development of Medical Tourism in Croatia“ was also presented at the meeting. In Croatia, tourism holds the largest share in GDP with 19% and is the most promising branch of economy. At the same time, health tourism as a type of tourism employs 10,000 people and annually generates only about EUR 300 million in revenues from health services, which makes for less than 3% of total revenues from tourism in Croatia. AmCham believes that, taking all the positive aspects of this branch of tourism into account, it is necessary to invest more effort into positioning Croatia as an internationally recognizable destination for health tourism, and specifically for medical tourism, as one of its subtypes.

Ms. Đurić welcomed AmCham’s initiatives, and pointed out that digitalization and artificial intelligence have an important position in the EU budget for the upcoming financial period. Also, it is necessary to more strongly link tourism, health care and economy with EU funds to find mechanisms to more strongly support medical tourism in Croatia.