Protest held over labour law changes

Hundreds of trade union members have taken part in a protest against labour law changes in the Croatian capital Zagreb. The Croatian government is proposing labour law reforms that would provide more flexibility for employers.

Union member Drago Domazet complained: “The existing labour law is pretty good – and we can’t say that it’s as rigid as employers say. If the new law is passed, it’ll represent twilight of labour.” The rally came a day after unions organised a two-hour general strike – held in solidarity with workers from two companies who have not been paid their salaries for months.

*******************************************

69 percent of citizens believe governments leads Croatia in wrong direction

A new poll carried out by agency Ipsos Plus and reported by Nova TV has shown that 69 percent of Croatian citizens think the government leads Croatia in a wrong direction. Only 26 percent of citizens supports government policy. According to the same poll, the most popular politician is the president Ivo Josipovic, while Mirela Holy the leader of the new party ORAH (Sustainable Development of Croatia) surprisingly takes second position.

****************************************************************

Croatia nears first offshore licensing round

Croatia is on schedule to offer its first offshore licensing round this April. “We have defined 29 offshore blocks for the upcoming license round ranging from approximately 1,000 to 1,600 sq km (386 to 618 sq mi),” said Ivan Vrdoljak, Croatia’s minister of Economy. “Even though additional offshore areas have been previously available for exploration we excluded near shore and other sensitive areas.  Fiscal terms have also been defined with the assistance of leading consultancy firm IHS and an extensive benchmarking exercise has been undertaken to ensure that we will be competitive with both our regional and global peers.”

At the same time, Vrdoljak said Barbara Doric was appointed interim president of Croatia’s hydrocarbon agency.  Doric added, “We are now accepting bookings to our offshore data room.  The data room includes legacy seismic and well data plus brute stacks of a recently complete multi-client 2D seismic survey."