Justice Minister Drazen Bosnjakovic said that setting up a labour court in Zagreb was necessary because of the fact that the highest number of labour-related disputes were filed with the municipal civil court in Zagreb.
Last year, a total of 15,400 case files from the labour legislation were lodged with all municipal courts throughout Croatia and of this number, 7,800 were forwarded to the Zagreb municipal civil court.
The establishment of the specialised labour court in Zagreb will thus deal with 50 percent of all labour disputes in Croatia, the minister added.
An analysis of the situation with regard to the backlog of labour-related cases has shown that there are some 30,000 cases still in process being dealt with, the minister said denying speculations about the backlog of 200,000 labour complaints.
The government also proposed amendments to the law on court register, including a duty for all who want to establish a new company to declare that they have no outstanding obligations such past due payments to their employees.
The government also endorsed a decision to conclude a contract with the European Investment Bank for financing projects of development of infrastructure on islands and the coastal areas.
The EIB is expected to participate in those projects with a loan of EUR 25 million euros.
The government was informed about the financing of projects and programmes of civil society organisations from the state budget in 2010.
Last year, a total of HRK 489 million were earmarked for those purposes, with Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor saying that nearly HRK 2.5 billion had been allocated from the state budget for those purposes in the last five years.