The Croatian Retired Persons’ union (SUH) criticised the government on Thursday for the 60% net increase in the salaries of state officials. It described this as shameful and pointed out that pensioners are living below the poverty line and have once again been cheated and humiliated.

Public officials’ salaries are being extravagantly increased “in a sneaky way in the middle of summer” while pensioners were promised “chump change” before the elections, says SUH, noting that the government does not care that the average pension as a percentage of the average salary has fallen to just 35.6%.

“You say the budget is tight and that no one is even getting the fixes you promised, but you have revised your salaries to double them, including the salaries of ministers who have a degree in sports from God knows where or a degree in theology,” says HUS.

The basic salary of state officials will increase by 83.45%, from the current €516 to a gross monthly salary of €947. Multiplied by the coefficient, the net salary of state officials will increase by more than 60%, and by as much as 70% for top state officials.

The SUH recalls that the poverty line in 2023 was €493.6 per month, while the average pension in May 2024 was €534.8, with women’s pensions being on average 24% lower than men’s.

“People are sickened by this”

The poverty rate for over-65s was 34.8 in 2023, 38.8% for women and as high as 60% in older single-person households.

“Hunger, poverty, humiliation – this is the life of most of our pensioners. And now Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic will have a salary of more than €5,500, while President Zoran Milanović will receive more than €6,000, ten times the average pension and 32 times the minimum pension,” says SUH.

“People are sickened by this, 70% are against this megalomaniacal salary increase, especially when it comes to the new ministers and state secretaries of the Domovinski pokret (DP) party. Pensioners have been tricked and humiliated again. And they have started to light themselves on fire in public,” said SUH.

It recalled that the European Commission had warned the government several times that it needed to increase pensions and that the government had promised a correction to the pension indexation model in November 2023, but the plan has since been scrapped “because the urgent needs of the new coalition partners are more important.”

The statement by members of the government that the salaries of state officials would be increased “so that the new ministers and office holders would steal less” was “intolerable and immoral”, said SUH.