Prof. Dr. Sc. Dubravka Pekanov and Prof. Dr. Sc. Ivana Fosić presented the paper „Financing the Green Transition: Investment Needs and Policy Tools in the EU and Croatia" at the 46th RSEP International Conference on Economics, Finance and Business, held on April 17th and 18th, 2026, in Paris. The paper was co-authored with Prof. Dr. Sc. Boris Crnković.
The research investigates the financial dimension of the green transition, focusing on investment needs and financing instruments at the EU and Croatian levels. The research results indicate that financing, rather than regulation, is the main obstacle to achieving climate goals; the estimated annual investment gap amounts to at least 406 billion euros, and structural reasons lie in the uneven distribution of capital and differences in financial market development among member states. It is particularly emphasized that countries like Croatia face capital costs several times higher than the Western European average, creating a risk of a „two-speed" transition within the EU and highlighting the importance of institutional capacity for the effective use of available EU funds.
The work was created within the framework of the project Integrated approach to the economic challenges of the green transition – IPZET, financed by the European Union under the NextGenerationEU instrument.
