A new family pension model, to be introduced in 2022 at the earliest, will enable family members to receive a percentage of their deceased family member's pension and keep their own pension, according to unofficial information carried by the Jutarnji List daily.

According to the current family pension system, 70% of a deceased family member’s pension can be inherited, but the new beneficiary, who is mostly the widow, must give up their pension if that is a better option for them, Jutarnji List said in its Monday issue.

Family members, namely widows and widowers, common law partners, life partners and informal life partners, are entitled to a family pension if the union lasted for at least three years and if they reached 50 years of age before the death of their partner, providing that the deceased insured person completed five years of insurance periods or ten years of qualifying periods.

The Croatian Democratic Union and the government made a commitment in their programmes to regulate family pensions in a different, fairer way, and a working group to be tasked with drawing up a bill should be established soon, while the bill should be ready by the end of 2021.

The percentage that a family pension beneficiary will receive is to be determined by the working group, but the request by pensioners’ associations for it to be 50% of the inherited pension is not realistic, as it would be too much for the state budget to withstand.

The cheapest version would cost over HRK 1 billion a year, so the government says that the new model could only be introduced once the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic is over.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)