The first meeting of the Working Group for drafting the Proposal of the Act on Amendments to the Act on Insurance Periods with Increased Duration was held today at the Ministry of Labour and Pension System.

The Ministry of Labour and Pension System has conducted a comprehensive analysis of the pension system as a basis for preparing the entire package of pension laws, with the goal of achieving positive shifts in the pension system that will ultimately result in a better position for retirees.

The package of pension laws will go through the regular parliamentary procedure of two readings and will enter into force on 1 January 2019.

The Act on Insurance Periods with Increased Duration, known to the public as “benefited service,” is part of that package. Benefited service was established to protect workers employed in particularly difficult jobs harmful to health and working capacity, as well as to protect insured persons with disabilities.

The Act covers 95 workplaces and 11 professions, involving approximately 25,000 insured persons.

The purpose of amending this Act, which was passed in 1999, is to adapt benefited service to 21st-century technologies.

To that end, experts in occupational medicine and safety from the Croatian Institute for Health Protection and Safety at Work have prepared an expert study following direct insight into workplace conditions, preliminary analysis of available risk assessment studies upon which specific workplaces were determined as eligible for benefited service, analysis of sick leave data for workers performing heavy labor, and data on occupational diseases, injuries at work, and disability pensions.

At the beginning of the meeting, Minister Pavić emphasized that there will be no administrative abolition, reduction, or introduction of new workplaces and professions into the insurance period with increased duration; instead, the process will be carried out based on expert documentation and legally prescribed procedures.

For all those who believe that the conditions at their workplaces or in their professions are particularly difficult and harmful to health and working capacity, we invite them to submit an incentive and the prescribed expert documentation to the Ministry of Labour and Pension System, which will obtain an expert opinion on the merits of the request.