Croatia working group: Capacity Building Employment Service

The Austrian-Croatian cooperation in the field of labour market policies can revert to more than three years of experience. The basic aim of this cooperation is to support the Croatian employment service and the responsible Ministry of Labour in building modern institutional structures that correspond to the current development demands in Croatia and are geared to comply with the European guidelines. Since October 2007 these activities are undertaken on the basis of an administration agreement between the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Labour with the Croatian Ministry of Economy, Labour and Entrepreneurship.
The L&R Social Research Institute had been commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Labour (now: Federal Ministry for Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection) to plan, manage and conduct the labour market cooperation with Croatia. When necessary, further partners such as the bfi vocational training institute or the WIFI institute for economic promotion of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber were invited to join the cooperation. Key activities in this context were:

• Information seminars on current topics of Croatian and European labour market policy
• Consulting service for the Croation labour market institutions on strategic and struc-tural issues
• Exemplary qualification measures in cooperation with Austrian companies that are active in Croatia
• Labour market conferences with representatives of the Austrian and Croatian labour ministries, the two labour market service institutes, the social partners and other institutions that are relevant in terms of labour market policy.