The strategy envisages categorising some entitlements in a single category, for example the category permanent assistance would cover the right to support benefits, the right to have one's costs of accommodation in a student hall covered, and the right to financial assistance for students who received care outside their families.
The strategy envisages a change in the method of determining the basis for social benefits, which would be calculated on the basis of the relative poverty line (60% of the median line of the national income).
Under the bill, expenses for social benefits will increase by 212.8 million kuna this year, and by 430.1 million kuna in 2008.
The government sent to parliament the first report on the state of the environment for the 1997-2005 period.
The report reads that the country's population continues to concentrate around urban areas, that 4,700 hectares of land has been permanently converted, that the size of land used for ecological farming has continued to grow, but that it still makes up a negligible 0.2% of the overall farmland.
Public transportation decreased, while the road transport of goods increased (11 times in the period from 1997 to 2004), the number of personal cars rose by 39%, and the amount of municipal waste increased by 20%.
The government also sent a bill on volunteering to parliament.
It approved the launching of a procedure to sign with the World Bank an EUR 100 million loan agreement for an inland waterway project worth EUR 105.3 million.