Abstract
The chapter starts with a short overview of recent socio-demographic and socio-economic trends and how they challenge the Croatian welfare state, the severity of the crisis and the main crisis-related reforms. The reforms in the main social policy areas (labour market, pensions, healthcare, family policy, social assistance and eldercare) are explored in more detail afterwards, putting an additional focus on arguments behind the reforms and the way the welfare programmes were (re)balanced and (re)orientated in the crisis period.
Many of the challenges the social systems are facing in Croatia have their roots in the pre-crisis period. The high politicization of social issues reflected in inadvisable reforms around elections, as well as ad-hoc, uncoordinated and ill-advised reforms in general brought numerous side-effects resulting in additional difficulties mostly related to financial sustainability, but also an adequacy and efficiency of social systems. Structural difficulties and already existing institutional deficits become thus only additionally aggravated with the crisis putting a new burden on the welfare state, particularly as the crisis progressed and the need for consolidation of public finances grew. The earliest government’s response in the area of welfare state was indeterminate and absent, while further reform efforts were often vague and did not follow a clear anti-crisis strategy. They resulted in inadvisable, ad-hoc reforms predominantly aimed at savings. The reform processes in some areas became closely connected to the “deservingness” discourse, making strong arguments against the welfare state.
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Notes
- 1.
I would like to thank Vlado Puljiz for valuable comments on this paper.
- 2.
See more on clientelism in Stubbs and Zrinščak (2011).
- 3.
Migration data are not fully reliable as only registered emigrations are reported (persons are not obliged to report migration to other countries).
- 4.
I am grateful to Ivan Čipin for clarifications regarding this data.
- 5.
- 6.
In 2012 15,688 of elderly were placed in residential care and 31,259 were on the waiting lists (although this data must be read carefully as there is no central waiting list and usually one person applies to more facilities), with an underdeveloped network of non-residential forms of care (MSPY 2013a; Dobrotić and Prpić 2013).
- 7.
The current government is sending ambivalent messages as increased retirement age and stimulation of later retirement were followed by the proposal to retire persons employed in the public sector, who meet the retirement criteria (MF 2013).
- 8.
That is one of the features distinguishing Croatia from many others post-communist countries.
- 9.
That is mainly assigned to the problems related to transition, ineffective policy of restructuring, early retirement policy, slow reforms in the education system and the unofficial economy (Obadić 2009).
- 10.
Implementation failed due to its restricted eligibility, administrative requirements, and low financial initiatives (Franičević 2011).
- 11.
Only 2.4 % of persons participated in lifelong learning in 2013 in Croatia (10.4 % in EU28; Eurostat 2014).
- 12.
The government’s unconstitutional decision to restrict the rise in pensions in the 1990s brought a “pensioners’ debt”, and a new pension formula introduced in 1999 created a low level of new pensions. As the pensioners’ debt must be paid back and new pensions were increased by the introduction of pension supplements, the financial sustainability of the system worsened even more (Puljiz 2012).
- 13.
E.g. members of parliament, of government, and of the constitutional court.
- 14.
There are 55 % old-age pensions, 22.8 % disability pensions and 21.4 % survivors’ pensions, while 15.1 % of pensioners have considerably higher pensions gained under special conditions (Puljiz 2012).
- 15.
That was an option for those aged 40–50 in the time of the reform.
- 16.
Contributions solely covered 54 % expenditures of the pension system in 2012 and the remaining 46 % were financed from the public budget (VRH 2013a), an additional cost of around 4.8 % of the GDP.
- 17.
The at-risk-of-poverty rate in Croatia was 20.5 % in 2012. The poverty rate of the elderly was 26.5 % with a gender difference of 9.3 percentage points in favour of women (Eurostat 2014).
- 18.
The WB has supported reforms in healthcare since 1995 (Zrinščak 2008b).
- 19.
As all kinds of work are regarded as working time, including duty and work on-call, the previous government introduced the possibility to work overtime with a signed consent. As overtime is paid at higher rates, that caused a significant increase in salary costs and the current government proposed flat-rate remuneration.
- 20.
Although in 2012 the maximum level of co-payment fees was slightly lowered (Act 22/2012), at the same time the reimbursement of travel costs was limited (it applies to cases when user is travelling more than 50 km to receive healthcare).
- 21.
They planned to additionally lower the contribution rate for healthcare in 2013, however, that was not realised.
- 22.
E.g. parental leave can be used until the child turns 8, parents can use their entitlement at the same time or consecutively, parental leave can be taken on part-time basis, in one or several periods.
- 23.
Information received through the interview with the representative of Social Democratic Party (interview conducted in April 2011 by I. Dobrotić).
- 24.
E.g. with 57 % of 4-year-old children attending childcare, Croatia is far below the European average of 90.8 % (Matković and Dobrotić 2013).
- 25.
An educational dimension was not explicitly foreseen in the provision of these services.
- 26.
One of the elements of workfare paradigm is the argument against welfare dependency (see Csoba 2013).
- 27.
At the political level a marketization was advocated before all and new residential homes de facto started to be predominantly set up by non-state providers, mainly private ones (Dobrotić and Plasová 2013).
- 28.
Family-type homes are small housing units for up to 20 persons.
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Dobrotić, I. (2016). Crisis and Croatian Welfare State: A New Opportunity for Welfare State Retrenchment?. In: Schubert, K., de Villota, P., Kuhlmann, J. (eds) Challenges to European Welfare Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07680-5_14
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