"We have to establish a wage union, in which workers across the entire EU will get equal payment for equal work", unaffiliated MP Andrej Čuš, who heads the Andrej Čuš List, told the press on Tuesday on behalf of the initiators.

The campaign, which has also been joined by the non-parliamentary Greens of Slovenia, is aimed at ending the "dictatorship of Brussels and Berlin", according to Čuš, who was joined at the press conference by his Hungarian and Croatian colleagues Marton Gyongyösi and Frano Čirko.

"We are missing the social dimension in the discussion on the future of the EU," he said, pointing to the issue of brain drain, especially of the young people, from less developed to developed EU member states.

Čirko noted that more than 300,000 people had left Croatia in the last three years. "The key reason for emigration are differences between wages in our and destination countries, which in Croatia's case is primarily Germany".

While stressing that he did not have anything against emigration, he said that the EU "must identify the fact that people are forced to leave their country because of wage differences as a problem".

The initiative, launched last March by representatives of Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, aims at influencing the drafting of new legislation at the EU level by means of mechanisms allowed for by the Lisbon Treaty, added Gyongyösi.

According to him, around 200,000 signatures have been collected so far, including more than 100,000 in Hungary. He expects a new momentum as new countries, including Slovenia, and new organisations are joining the initiative.

Signatures in Slovenia are collected on the website placnaunija.eu.