June the 10th, 2022 - Could new Croatian Government plans see normal employment permitted for people until they reach the age of 68? While there are certainly many industries in which this would either not be possible or would simply be undesirable, it seems that it could well be on the cards.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, one of the most interesting novelties of the Croatian Government's legislative proposals is that it proposes extending the age until which a worker can be employed from 65 to 68 years of age, as confirmed by our interlocutors from the trade union and the Croatian Employers' Association (HUP).

At the same time, clearly, the age requirement for exercising the right to retirement remains 65 years in this country, which is prescribed by another law, Jutarnji list writes.

In other words, Croatian employers would not be able to terminate their employment contracts held with those employees who are turning 65 if the workers themselves do not want to agree to that, and after the age of 68, it will simply become a matter of agreement between the employee and the employer.

Of course, these new Croatian Government plans open up many questions, the most important of which being; who will want to work at that age, or in which industries is such a move remotely realistic? As HUP's negotiator for ZOR Nenad Seifert pointed out, when an employment contract is indeed terminated after an employee reaches 65 years of age, workers will not be entitled to any severance pay, given that they will then retire.

In the first version of the ZOR proposal, the age limit for the duration of employment was dropped, which, according to him, seemed somewhat insane.

Nevertheless, the Republic of Croatia is among the three European Union (EU) member states with a legal age limit for the termination of employment contracts. Fierce discussions were held in the negotiations on other issues, such as the extension of fixed-term contract periods.

Both the Ministry of Labour and the unions referred to data showing that the Republic of Croatia is at the infamous European top of the list (with an embarrassing share of more than 20 percent), and about 90 percent of new employment contracts are still concluded for a certain period of time, which is a very uncertain and often unwelcome form of work.

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