Did the European Union direct Croatia to import two hundred thousand workers from the Middle East into the country? No, that's not true: No such order was issued from the European Union's headquarters in Belgium. The claim misleadingly referred to a Croatian news article on the country's credit rating which reported that Croatia would need to attract two hundred thousand foreign workers to the country in the future.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) which was published on October 11, 2023, with a caption translated into English from Croatian by Lead Stories staff that reads:
An order received from Brussels - Croatia to import 200 thousand more people from the Middle East. Do you need it spelled out?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Oct 30 08:29:35 2023 UTC)
The claim appeared over a screenshot of an article in the online news portal Tportal which reported that Standard and Poor's Ratings (S&P) confirm Croatia's credit rating, but warned the country must attract more foreign workers. The S&P Global Ratings is a credit rating agency that publishes financial research and analysis and provides credit ratings on countries, companies and markets. On September 23, 2023, it published its report on Croatia, saying that the biggest structural challenge Croatia faces is a declining population, and it estimated that an additional 200,000 foreign workers, 5% of its total population, would need to satisfy labor market needs.
The claim contained in the post was a misinterpretation of a report about the country's credit rating and workforce shortage made by the S&P, and not an order from Brussels to increase the number of workers it accepts from the Middle East.
