On 6^th July 2010 a meeting of the working group for the DENS (Different Experiences – New Solutions) project was held at the Croatian Employment Service in Zagreb. Aim of the meeting was to stimulate the debate on successful and efficient national policies and practices on different levels (national, regional, local) in the area of increasing labour supply with a focus on active aging and promoting flexicurity.

 The working group at the meeting included representatives of ministries responsible for economy and social welfare, organisations responsible for implementation of the policies (Croatian Employment Service), companies and unions (Croatian Employers’ Association, Croatian Chamber of Trade and Crafts, Union of Autonomous Trade Unions of Croatia and Croatian Independent Unions),  local communities and other relevant agencies.

 After initial presentations which were focused on employment, flexicurity and active ageing in European Union and Croatia, a lively debate developed, where the participants agreed that although key flexicurity components are present in most of the strategic documents in Croatia, the lack of corresponding legislation is one of the main causes for the fact that the actual implementation is not on the satisfactory level. Further, the social dialogue is underdeveloped, mostly due to scarce capacity on the part of social partners, unclear representativeness criteria for social partners, fragmentation of trade unions and an over-dominant role of the government in this dialogue.

 The companies have to increase their commitment to changes - adapt their organizational structures in order to increase competiveness, enhance knowledge and skills of their workers, acquire of excellent management and develop capabilities for innovation and creation of added value – to be able to take a more active role in the areas of flexicurity and active ageing. On the other side, in order to become more competitive, the workers need an educational system which creates a possibility or timely development of relevant skills and an income security where loss of work does not lead to the loss of all income and leads into poverty.  In order to achieve both, flexibility and security a reform of existing system of labour market legislation and social transfers is needed. The current systems resulted in a situation, where there is high level of protection of the workplace for the “insiders” and lack of security for the “outsiders”. Participants also agreed that a greater emphasis has to be put on better implementation of life-long learning concepts and programmes in order to ensure participation of a greater number of Croatian citizens in life-long learning.