Željko Mrnjavac

Croatian accession to the European Union (EU) has both benefits and challenges. Croatian workers have gained access to job opportunities in other EU member states (MSs), reducing registered unemployment and resulting in a severe brain drain. The free movement of persons in today’s world is crucially different from those during the early period of globalisation. While earlier emigrants were mostly unqualified and unskilled workers, international migration is characterised by an intense brain drain and participation of the most active and brave persons today. Due to various reasons, in approximately the last 30 years, Croatian citizens have had a low inner migration, while many persons, mainly young and educated, decide to emigrate abroad. According to the official data from 2012 to 2021, Croatia recorded a negative net migration balance of 112,000 persons. However, official statistics from recipient MSs show that the number of emigrants should be significantly higher. More than half of persons who emigrated from Croatia in 2021 moved to EU MSs, primarily Germany.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between digital skills and employment and in this way accentuate importance of policy interventions for improving digital literacy.Design/methodology/approach: Using Eurostat data, this paper demonstrates statistically significant correlation between digital skills and employment rates in EU.Findings: This implies why it is so important for governments and employers to seek, propose and implement new strategies to promote digital inclusion, literacy and the training not only for new ICT professionals but also for the whole workforce.Social implications: Digital skills, particularly digital literacy, are an important factor for socio-economic development of the society and employability of the labour force. Without adequate digital literacy, it is not possible to participate in the economy and the digital society, particularly having in mind the digital transformation that the world of work is experiencing in the content and the organisation. Beyond the work environment, it also affects the way people live and communicate.Originality/value: In this paper, the importance and definition of digital literacy are elaborated, explaining the measurement of digital literacy and skills, as well as the relation between digital literacy and employability.

Local Action Groups LAGs are tri-sectoral bodies in which the economic and civil sectors in partnership with the public sector use EU policy funds for rural development. In such a decentralized approach to community led local development there is a risk of excessive municipal interference and principles of bottom-up development can be compromised. The basic assumption by which the leading public sector is trying to justify itself as having a better administrative capacity that can help LAGs to attract and absorb subsidies is statistically tested in this paper. Example of Croatia has shown that “municipalisation” of local partnerships have no justifications, as increasing the share of public partners in the membership structure reduces LAG effectiveness in attracting project subsidies, and in the same time municipalities that prove stronger absorptive capacity through larger share of EU funds in their budget, show no positive influence transferred to LAGs in which they are members.

The socialist approach to housing in Croatia was to give tenants strong, and to some extent rigid, rights. During this paradigm, market renting was also discouraged. The policy privileged tenants and gave them subsidized rent, but it also limited their spatial mobility if they did not want to lose that privileged status. After independence, two vital processes on the housing market were undertaken: the privatization of socially owned housing stock and denationalization. Consequently, the stock of apartments previously owned by the companies and the state was sold to the ‘tenancy right’ holders for just a small part of its market value, resulting in more than 80 per cent of apartment users becoming legal owners. That is a positive outcome from a social policy perspective, but it could endanger the mobility of the Croatian labour force. Price developments and turnover dynamics are still bounded by underdeveloped and outdated cadastre as well as strong regional differences.

Many recent studies have highlighted the importance of quality of governance and institutions for economic performance. According to New Institutional Economics, the quality of governance and institutions is a fundamental precondition for sustained increases in prosperity, well-being, and territorial cohesion. The quality of governance influences people’s health, their access to basic services, social trust, and political legitimacy. Governance encompasses the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised, and its performance can be measured. In this chapter we use the World Bank’s measure Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). The aim of the chapter is to highlight the variation of the quality of government between regions of Scandinavia and South East Europe and to analyse recent changes in South East Europe. Not surprisingly, Scandinavian regions outperform all other EU regions in quality of government, and the situation has been stable over time. In South East Europe, the situation has improved, although at a slow pace. Whereas the rule of law and government efficiency seem to be steadily increasing, the fight against corruption has been less successful.

Long-term unemployment (when a person is jobless for more than 12 months) can have serious negative consequences for the individual, society and its economic system. People who are unemployed for a long-term period find it more difficult to be employed as time goes by. Long-term unemployed persons often have limited employability, due to their low level of educational attainment, loss of skills and the substantial expenditures that are necessary to restore these skills. They also face significantly lower earnings and restricted career prospects. The participation rate of the long-term unemployed in employment programmes is usually very low. The article considers the significance of long-term unemployment in Croatia and measures for its reduction.

The education in South-East Europe and trade-off between efficiency and equity