Croatia will have to invest significant and long term efforts to adjust its social policy and social protection to the EU, it was said at the debate organised by the Institute for Public Finance and Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
Sinisa Zrinscak of the Zagreb Law School said the problem was that Croatia did not know which social model to apply and the EU, because of the nonexistence of a uniform social policy model, could only give guidelines, for example to reduce poverty and social exclusion.
The head of the social issues department of the European Commission Delegation to Croatia, Enrique Aguado Asenjo, said the Croatian government proposed only one social policy project within the CARDS and PHARE programmes regarding active measures on the labour market for disabled persons, the unemployed, young people and Roma.
He said this was due to the insufficient number of people in the ministries competent for drawing up project-related documents and monitoring project implementation.
New EU members used EU programmes to a far greater extent in order to fund projects related to the labour market, minorities, social dialogue, gender equality, safety in the workplace, and pension system reform, it was said.
Social spending in Croatia accounts for 26 per cent of GDP, with 14 per cent being spent on pensions and nine per cent on health. In Slovenia, 11 per cent of GDP goes on pensions and seven per cent on health. The problem is that Croatia's GDP per capita is half the Slovene figure, the round-table debate heard.