Seks was commenting on Wednesday's decision by the Constitutional Court that there were no grounds for calling a referendum on the extended application of collective agreements after the government withdrew its amendments to labour legislation from the parliamentary procedure in September.

"The present decision of the Constitutional Court, as well as its previous and future decisions, should be respected as they are binding on everyone -- on the legislature, the government and the judiciary and on all other branches and sub-branches of authority in Croatia," Seks said.

The chairman of the parliamentary caucus of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Andrija Hebrang, said that state institutions should be respected even when one did not like their decisions.

"We cannot call for dissolution of the Constitutional Court just because its decisions don't suit us. Tomorrow, if a government decision doesn't suit us, we will call for dissolution of the government. That would lead us to anarchy," Hebrang said.

Hebrang said that the Constitutional Court judges should not have responded to statements by trade union leaders so harshly, adding that the trade unions should consider the general interest of the country at the moment, which he said was social peace rather than street protests.

Hebrang said that the unions should delay their demands until Croatia joined the European Union and began generating growth.

On the other hand, opposition MPs supported union plans for action, ranging from strikes and protest rallies to signature-gathering drives for early elections, unless Parliament called a referendum against the government-sponsored amendments to the Labour Act despite the Constitutional Court ruling.

Ingrid Anticevic Marinovic of the strongest opposition party, the Social Democrats (SDP), told reporters that further union actions were acceptable, adding that citizens expected such actions.

"Regardless of who may organise citizens, and citizens expressed their will in huge numbers, they should not be abandoned by anyone," Anticevic Marinovic said.

"Such a court ruling was expected, because the HDZ made it clear through its statements in the parliamentary Committee on the Constitution and through its statements to the media that there would be no referendum," she said, adding that there was no reason for this matter to have been referred to the Constitutional Court in the first place.

Anticevic Marinovic said that now it was an illusion to expect the parliamentary majority to call the referendum.

Labour Party leader Dragutin Lesar said that Parliament could have called a referendum without referring the matter to the Constitutional Court.