1) Professionalization of public procurement aims to improve the quality of procurement procedures, not as an end in itself. 2) Croatia introduced a structured certification system in 2009 to meet EU requirements and address practitioner needs, though training was difficult for small authorities due to costs and distance. 3) Croatia's initial system was too demanding and infeasible, so a smaller-scale mandatory certification system was introduced requiring 50 hours of training, an exam, and 32 hours of renewal every three years without education prerequisites.