engleski

Croatia

The Croatian constitution provides for various instruments of direct democracy at the national as well as the local and regional levels, which, at least at first glance, makes Croatia one of the countries with significant opportunities for direct decision-making by the people. However, these instruments have become part of the Croatian constitutional order at different times, with some of them having been designed more or less without due deliberation and with no enthusiastic support of the representatives in Parliament. They are inconsistent in some essential aspects and, in the case of the popular initiative, fraught with significant procedural hurdles and legal loopholes, which makes their practical application difficult. The most severe constitutional problem related to the functioning of direct democracy in Croatia has been the legal deficiency of constitutional and statutory regulation of the popular initiative. The second crucial problem has been the absence of legal limits in the Constitution as to the issues which may be the subject of a referendum. As a consequence, only three referendums have been held at the national level (of which just one upon the request of the citizens) and not many more at the local and regional levels since the establishment of the Croatian state some 30 years ago. Although Croatia belongs to the small group of countries having a ‘large popular initiative on constitutional and legislative matters’ the full potential of the popular initiative has not been realized. The reasons for that are twofold: first, the very high number of signatures required and the procedural difficulties in collecting these signatures and, second, the decisions of the Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of popular initiatives. The fact is that whenever the Court has been asked by the Parliament to determine whether the formal conditions have been fulfilled or whether the referendum question is in accordance with the Constitution, its decision has been negative. The greatest successes of popular initiatives have been achieved when the Parliament had not asked the Court to determine whether the referendum question was in accordance with the Constitution.

the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia, legal limits of direct democracy, popular initiative, constitutional court

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