Emigration from Central and Eastern Europe to Western Europe has resulted in many countries having labour shortages and not being able to do without immigrants, the Jutarnji List daily issue of Sunday reports, noting that 16% of workers aged 20-64 have left Croatia.

Economists are agreed that the main characteristics of the labour market are low employment, high labour demand and an extremely large number of available jobs, which leaves policy-makers with the choice of increasing the use of technologies or importing workers.

Emphasis should be put on increasing productivity, not employment, Christian Kopf, director of the German company Union Investment Privatfonds, said at a panel discussion held as part of the recent Dubrovnik Economic Conference.

This can be accomplished in different ways, including by employing translation applications, it was said at the panel. The European Central Bank, for example, currently employs 200 translators. If a translation tool, for example DeepL, were to be used, “a significantly lower number of translators would be needed,” it was said at the event.

However, technology cannot solve the problem of labour demand in labour-intensive services, notably in the tourism industry, the daily notes.