The presentation was organised by the Croatian Council for National Minorities and WYG International from Great Britain.
The handbook, which is part of a project assisting national minorities' councils in areas of special state interest, was financed with EUR 700,000 from the European Union programme CARDS 2003.
Speaking about the importance of the publication, the chairman of the Council for National Minorities, Aleksandar Tolnauer, said that there was political will and consent in Croatia to regulate entirely issues related to national minorities, but that the process was too slow for many reasons, ranging from insufficient knowledge of minorities' rights to the inadequately trained local government units.
Sinisa Tatalovic, President Stjepan Mesic's advisor on issues related to the political system, said the exercise of rights by national minorities in Croatia was complex because some of the national minorities had been faced with the question of survival and identity during the Homeland War.
"Croatia has regulated the rights of national minorities at a high European level, but it started implementing provisions from the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities and other regulations only when its EU entry negotiations started," Tatalovic said.
He advocated holding elections for minorities' councils at the same time as local elections, explaining that the proposal was motivated by a low turnout at recent minority elections.
Vukovar County Prefect Bozo Galic said that one in five residents of Vukovar County was a member of a national minority. Also speaking at the presentation were a member of a national minority and president of the Vukovar Town Council, Jure Biluskovic, and the head of the project team WYG International, who headed the project on behalf of the EU, Ion Craciunel.
The handbook, which has some 150 pages, contains explanations and interpretations of minority rights, institutions in charge of their rights, and a definition of minority councils and their role.
A section of the publication is dedicated to the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities, the procedure for the establishment of a body coordinating minority councils and representatives, and their funding.
The handbook includes the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities and a number of other laws and international treaties regulating minority rights.
The on-line presentation of the handbook is available at www.nacionalne-manjine.info.