It certainly is a happy New Year for Croatia, a start of the year loaded with positive news. Starting with the fact that from midnight Croatia entered the Schengen Zone, the European Union’s border-free area, which will not only make travel considerably easier but will be a massive boost for trade. Now you can drive from Dubrovnik to Oslo or to Lisbon without borders. Compare this to only a few decades ago when Croatians had to get a visa just to travel through most European countries, now they can travel as they please. And you don’t have to change your money, for as from midnight Croatia is now in the Eurozone, meaning that the Euro is now the official currency. Tourism, trade and indeed travel have had a bumper start to 2023.

But the EU news isn’t the only new laws and regimes that have come into effect from the beginning of the new year, writes Jutarnji List.

From today, the minimum wage has been increased to 700 euro gross, or 560 euros net. Around 35,000 workers across Croatia will now have an increase in their salary. From 2016 until today the gross minimum wage has increased by 69 percent.

At midnight, amendments to the Labour Act entered into force, which, among other things, stipulate that only three consecutive fixed-term contracts can be concluded with a worker within a period of three years, in order to prevent the abuse of this insecure employment model, while the conditions for working from home and remote working are being worked out in more detail.

For hundreds of thousands of workers, the new Labour Law brings another very important innovation. Everyone who works on Sundays will have to be paid at least 50 percent more than on a normal weekday. Until now, the law defined only that they had to be paid more, but not how much, so it could happen that they were paid only one Kuna more for working on Sundays.

And a non-working Sunday will be introduced in the trade sector. Traders will only be able to work 16 Sundays a year (and that by their own choice), while the other Sundays will have to be non-working. Admittedly, numerous exceptions have been introduced again in the new Trade Act, so that on Sundays, shops will still be able to operate within petrol stations, railway stations, markets, bakeries, kiosks, etc.

At midnight, the new regulation of family pensions came into force, according to which the survivor, in addition to his/her own pension, can also inherit 27 percent of the deceased spouse's pension. At the same time, all family pensions are increasing by ten percent.

The implementation of the Government's decision on the co-financing of at least one free meal per day for each pupil in primary schools, more precisely for 311 thousand pupils, came into force. The state hereby allocates ten Kuna per pupil per day, or 550 million Kuna on an annual basis. It is estimated that in Croatia as many as 80 thousand children live at risk of poverty, so we hope that the policy of introducing free meals in schools will go relatively smoothly.

And just to remind you the euro has become the official currency in Croatia, and the Kuna is history. During the first 14 days of 2023 it will be possible to pay in both euros and Kuna, but vendors will have to return your change in euros. After that transition period, the currency of payment will be exclusively the euro, while the dual display of prices will continue until the end of the year.