The European Union, which is trying to boost its competitiveness in the global market, is engaged in a major debate on a Scandinavian model which combines greater labour market flexibility and greater social security, the so-called flexicurity. The concept does not protect the job but the person who loses his/her job, and so far this model has proven to be very successful in northern EU member-countries.
Asked if work contracts should become more flexible to create more jobs, 72 percent of respondents in the 25 EU member-countries answered in the positive, and 83 percent of respondents in Croatia answered the same.
The answers differed mostly with regard to retirement age. Most Hungarians (73%) and Croatians (71%) believe that they are sent into retirement too soon. In Estonia and Lithuania only 17 and 16 percent of respondents respectively believe that they are sent into retirement too early.
The survey shows that labour mobility has become a reality in Europe. Most respondents (55%) have changed between one and five employers during their career.
The lower the unemployment rate, the greater the confidence of workers that they will keep their jobs. For example, 92 percent of respondents in Sweden were confident about keeping their current jobs in coming months, while in Slovakia, which has the highest unemployment rate, only 49 percent of respondents gave such an answer.
The average in the EU was 84 percent and in Croatia it was 83 percent.
The answers were slightly different when the respondents were asked if they expected to keep their current job in the next two years. In the EU, 46 percent were confident they would keep their jobs in the next two years, while in Croatia 37 percent of respondents answered the same.
The most confident about keeping their job were the Dutch (62%), Danes and Britons (61%) and Swedes (60%), while Hungarians (33%), and Poles and Slovaks (29%) were the least sure about such a possibility.
The survey revealed big differences with regard to professional training. In the last 12 months, 54 percent of Swedes, 42 percent of the Dutch and 41 percent of the Finnish had some kind of additional training. In Croatia only 13 percent of employees had additional training. Even lower percentage was reported in Romania (10%), Bulgaria (9%) and Turkey (7%).