Croatian Labour Minister, Marko Pavic, met on Monday with Ukraine's Social Policy Minister, Andriy Reva, in Zagreb, and agreed to harmonise labour agreements between the two countries in order to better regulate seasonal workers coming to Croatia from Ukraine and their rights and pensions.

“Ukraine is currently debating introducing the second (private-run) pension pillar, which Croatia is currently using. Until then, we agreed to harmonise the technical details of agreements, including the issue of the labour market, pertaining to seasonal workers, outsourced workers, and the pensions and social service rights of our workers,” Pavic said after the meeting.

Currently there are around 1,000 Ukrainians with work permits employed in Croatia, and the country is increasingly turning to Ukraine to fill vacancies in construction and tourism.

Pavic said he was confident the agreements would be harmonised by the time of his visit to Ukraine, scheduled to take place in the near future, and that they would be signed during his visit.

Reva said people came looking for work regardless of international agreements, so the objective was to legalise this form of cooperation between the two countries.

Although citizens of nearly all EU countries can come to work in Croatia without restrictions, the government issues yearly quotas for workers from non-EU countries, which were increased this June to a record high of 35,000 permits available for employers offering jobs in industries with labour shortages.

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