Will the new Foreigners Act finally bring order to the employment of foreign workers in Croatia, or will the chaos that has lasted for years continue? The key question remains – how many of them are actually here, where they work, under what conditions, considering that no institution has a precise answer.
Although tourism and construction have depended on foreign workers for years, the law that would better regulate this area has only now come before the representatives, despite the urgent need for clearer rules. At the same time, nearly 900 intermediary agencies are registered in Croatia, thousands of workers are working illegally, many are not paid, and their living conditions are below any standard. Among these problems, many responsible employers, workers, and reputable agencies have become collateral victims of an unregulated system and “fishing in troubled waters.”
Perhaps the best recent example that describes this undefined, gray area where legal and business security is virtually non-existent occurred concerning workers from Bangladesh. Many employers, especially those in tourism and construction, have recently been receiving mass rejections for work and residence permits for workers from Bangladesh. If they do receive a work permit, their visas are mass-rejected. The reason? The Ministry of the Interior states that Bangladeshis, like Indians, Nepalese, Filipinos, and Egyptians, are considered a high-risk group in terms of abuse of Croatian D visas, and therefore they are subjected to additional checks. However, data from January shows that only Bangladeshis have been put under scrutiny.
In January of this year, the Ministry of the Interior issued 17,168 residence and work permits, which is about three thousand more than last January. Significantly more permits were issued this year for citizens of Nepal (about 1,100 more), the Philippines (about 800 more), India (about 800 more), and Egypt (about 450 more), while there was a slight increase in the number of permits for workers from North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Uzbekistan, and only the number of permits for citizens of Bangladesh decreased: from 1,026 to 617.
Representatives of a large hotel company complained to us that they had planned this season with a few hundred workers from Bangladesh, but their entire business plan is collapsing because the Ministry of the Interior is rejecting Bangladeshis without any official explanation. Furthermore, employers tell us that there is no address or instance where one can get an answer in Croatia today regarding why workers were rejected. Consequently, there is no address to which an employer can appeal. Agencies also live in the same ‘darkness’ when their workers are rejected.
– I hope that the new law will address this; as an agency, we are ready to provide guarantees, everything needed, just for the state to finally take a ‘sharp’ approach to agencies and employers who are actually trafficking in people. Because of them, we, with over 95 percent of satisfied workers and employers, now have to be victims – said the director of one of the older agencies in Croatia, which also works with people from Bangladesh.
Despite our insistence, the Ministry of the Interior has still not provided us with data on how many foreign nationals have abused Croatian visas, nor data on their country of origin after a month of searching.
Absurdities and Illogicalities
It is interesting in the context of potential ‘disappearances or escapes’ of foreign workers who should be working in Croatia to look at the comparison of work permits issued last year for foreign nationals from certain countries in relation to the number of those currently registered with the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute (HZMO). Currently, there are about 26,200 workers from Bosnia and Herzegovina registered with HZMO, for whom 38,100 permits were issued last year, 9,800 Filipinos are employed, and 14,700 permits were issued, while the ratio of issued permits to employed Nepalese is 2:1 (35,600 permits, 18,300 workers). A similar ratio applies to Indians (20,500 permits, 10,400 workers).
– The difference between the number of issued permits and the number of registered workers arises from the fact that the data on the number of issued residence and work permits includes every change that has occurred for each foreign national. This includes changes of employer, changes of occupation, extensions of permits, and similar administrative procedures. Therefore, the number of issued permits does not reflect the actual number of third-country nationals currently residing and working in the Republic of Croatia – explain the Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family and Social Policy.
However, from the above ratios between the number of permits and registered workers, it follows that every worker from Nepal or India has changed jobs within a year, which seems rather unlikely.
According to recent statements by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, during 2024, 286,000 applications for the issuance of residence and work permits for foreigners in Croatia were submitted. Of that number, 206,529 residence and work permits were issued. How many Croatian Schengen visas were issued to foreign workers during 2024 is officially unknown or not disclosed. This data is extremely important because employers particularly complain about situations where the Ministry of the Interior approves work and residence permits, but later rejects visas with the explanation of incomplete documentation.
An additional problem is the fact that, excluding workers for whom new work permits were issued due to job changes or extensions of stay in Croatia where they are already located, it is impossible to obtain data on the actual newly arrived workers. This absurdity is confirmed based on completely different numbers published by the Ministry of the Interior, the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute, or some other state institution. For example, according to data from the Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family and Social Policy, based on numbers from HZMO, in December 2024, there were 112,797 workers from third countries recorded in Croatia. However, how many of them came to Croatia? This data should be held by the Ministry of the Interior, but it seems they do not have it.
The Ministry of the Interior stated that at the beginning of February, 113,092 valid residence and work permits with a registered address of residence were issued, but the same Ministry reported at the end of 2023 that there were 117,549 third-country nationals in Croatia at that time. Thus, about four thousand more a year earlier. As of December 31, 2023, HZMO had a figure of about 90,000 foreign workers.
Why the numbers regarding foreign workers do not match, apart from the reasons stated by the Ministry of the Interior (departure to other Schengen countries), should definitely also be sought in undeclared work, but also in the fact that some intermediary agencies bring workers based on a work permit in one of the deficit occupations such as construction, and upon arrival, the worker is given a job with one of the delivery services. Some of these workers complain that they have not been paid for up to six months. Just accommodation, a small cash allowance, and food. Is it possible that the state does not know who the agencies and employers are that brought these people to Croatia?
Undeclared Work
The discrepancies in the numbers can also be seen from the data from the JEER system, in which all digital platforms, such as Glovo or Uber, must recently enter data about workers and their working hours. According to JEER, in 2024, out of a total of 22,083 people who worked through platforms, only 5,104 were officially foreign workers. Anyone who has ordered food through Wolt at least once will easily conclude that something is seriously wrong with these numbers, as it is almost impossible to see a Croatian delivering food. It is also hard to believe the official data reported by aggregators and digital platforms about the number of working hours: through digital platforms, individuals worked an average of 4 hours and 10 minutes per day, or 20 hours and 49 minutes per week. Looking at this hourly rate, which surely cannot be statistically significantly reduced by a few retirees or students who occasionally work through digital platforms, it is hard not to wonder if we are really importing a workforce that works only four hours a day?
Of course, this brings us to the issue of undeclared work, which is also confirmed by data from the State Inspectorate. Out of a total of 185 inspections conducted in 2024 at employers engaged in the activity of representation or mediation for one or more digital work platforms (so-called aggregators), due to reasonable suspicion of committing a total of 127 offenses, 29 indictments were submitted to the competent courts, and 34 misdemeanor orders were issued.
– The most frequently identified illegalities related to the non-registration of workers for mandatory pension and health insurance, including registration after the prescribed deadline, failure to issue written confirmation of the employment contract to workers before starting work when the employment contract was not concluded in writing, employment of third-country nationals without a residence and work permit or work registration confirmation, employment of third-country nationals in jobs for which they were not issued a residence and work permit or work registration confirmation, or with an employer for whom they were not issued a residence and work permit or work registration confirmation and with whom they did not establish an employment relationship – state the State Inspectorate.
In addition to the above, labor inspectors issued a total of 29 decisions to employers, of which one ordered the submission of an application for mandatory pension insurance for a worker found to be performing undeclared work and payment of an amount of 2,650.00 euros for each undeclared worker, as well as 14 oral decisions in the record temporarily prohibiting employers from conducting activities for a period of 30 days. Six employers from the latter 14 paid an amount of 3,981.68 euros for each third-country national, so the measure of temporary prohibition of conducting activities was not executed.
Due to reasonable suspicion of committing criminal offenses, labor inspectors also submitted 12 criminal charges against responsible persons of employers to the competent state attorney’s offices, for 10 criminal offenses due to violations of rights from social security and 9 criminal offenses of illegal employment. The majority of foreigners found in illegal work (without a residence and work permit or work registration confirmation) were citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Serbia, North Macedonia, India, and Kosovo, and illegal work of third-country nationals was most frequently identified in the construction and hospitality sectors.
