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Croatian Courts and the EU Interpretive Obligation

This paper discussed the compliance with interpretive obligation by Croatian courts five years into Croatia’s membership in the European Union. The first part reflected on contradictory and unclear pre-accession practices of Croatian courts regarding this EU law doctrine. The second part analysed whether the post-accession approach of Croatian courts has changed toward better acceptance of this doctrine. We argued that there is a slow qualitative change when compared to the pre- accession period, with rare examples of domestic courts interpreting Croatian law in accordance with EU law. We concluded that the main reason for this is a highly formalistic legal culture in which judges do not see their role as law makers but merely as law appliers, not used to rely on more vague legal sources such as national constitution or EU law as interpretative tools.

national courts ; interpretative obligation ; Croatia ; EU membership

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