The Austrian government has decided that there will be no changes regarding the access of Croatian workers to the Austrian labour market, Georg Diwald, a minister-advisor at the Austrian Embassy in Zagreb, told Hina on Thursday.
He recalled that Austria's position was applied to every new EU member.
Aside from that, unemployment in Austria has been on the rise and improvements in the coming months are unlikely, Diwald said.
At the same time, Luxembourg has decided to abolish restrictions for Croatian workers, with the spokesman for the country's foreign ministry, Thomas Barbancey, saying that the country did not plan to extend such restrictions beyond July 1.
Croatia's EU accession treaty envisaged the possibility of a transitional period during which EU member countries could introduce employment restrictions for Croatians according to the model "2+3+2", meaning that the initial two-year period of restricted access to the labour market could be extended by three more years, and by an additional two years if there was a justified reason for it.
When Croatia joined the EU on 1 July 2013, 13 countries - Germany, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Austria, Great Britain, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, Italy and Malta - used the option to restrict access to their labour markets for Croatian nationals for a period of two years.
Germany on Wednesday said that it would not use the additional possibilities of restriction and that as of July 1 there would be no employment restrictions whatsoever for Croatian nationals.
Slovenia previously said that it would extend the restrictions, and Belgium said that it would not.
After the latest decisions by Austria and Luxembourg, it remains to be seen what the remaining eight countries will decide.