Croatia's Minister of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure, Bozidar Kalmeta, has said that the government and the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) have never discussed plans to cut pensions and salaries in the public sector by as much as 15 percent this autumn.
"That is not true, we have never discussed it, either in the government or in the HDZ, so I can't comment on that," Kalmeta said in a late night news broadcast on Croatian Television on Wednesday.
The minister was responding to the remark by the programme's host who said that Deputy Prime Minister Darko Milinovic had made a statement to that effect for Globus weekly.
Milinovic's statement was neither his nor the government's official position, because we did not discuss the matter in the government or in the party, said Kalmeta.
The leader of the NHS trade union federation, Kresimir Sever, who also spoke in the news broadcast, said that if salaries and pensions were reduced, or more radical cuts were made in the health and pension systems, trade unions would have to unite and respond together.
"We have too little to be able to give up anything," he said.
