ZAGREB, Nov 25 (Hina) - Croatian parliament vice-president Mato Arlovic and the head of the European Union Monitoring Mission office in Zagreb, Hans Ewe, met on Monday to discuss a constitutional bill on minorities, the parliament's
public relations service said in a statement.
ZAGREB, Nov 25 (Hina) - Croatian parliament vice-president Mato
Arlovic and the head of the European Union Monitoring Mission
office in Zagreb, Hans Ewe, met on Monday to discuss a
constitutional bill on minorities, the parliament's public
relations service said in a statement. #L#
A government-sponsored final bill on minorities, which has been
sent into parliamentary procedure, contains a compromise solution
according to which minorities have the right to elect deputies to
parliament, which is regulated with the Election Law.
The new constitutional law would strengthen the acquired minority
rights, including that to use one's own language, have bilingual,
i.e. trilingual documents, the right to use one's own language and
script in schools, as well as symbols, insignia, coats-of-arms and
anthems, the right to establish religious institutions and
schools, and the right to minority self-government, reads the
statement.
Under the Croatian Constitution, all minorities are equal, but not
all of them have deputies in parliament. Those without
representatives in parliament are Albanians, Bosniaks,
Montenegrins, Macedonians, Slovenes, Turks, Romany, Romanians,
Russians and Bulgarians and in that respect they are not equal to
minorities with parliamentary representation, reads the
statement.
Arlovic said that a large number of Croatian citizens belonging to a
minority group exercise their voting rights through civil and not
minority rosters. On average, this ratio is 50:50 for Hungarians,
Italians, the Czech and Slovaks, while members of the Serb minority
vote six times less for their minority list than for party lists.
According to the 2001 census, Croatia has 331,383 members of
national minorities, which is 7.41% of the total population.
Arlovic believes that minority representatives should be elected
from party lists and independent citizens' lists to cover all
minorities. In this way, every minority would have its own
representative, reads the statement.
Ewe thanked Arlovic for today's detailed talks, stating that the
constitutional law had not been adopted yet for the simple reason
that there was a wish to regulate many issues with it.
However, since the new electoral legislation must be adopted at
least a year before regular elections, as regulated by the
Constitutional Law on the Implementation of the Constitution, this
means that the new electoral law should be adopted by April 2 next
year. If this does not happen, elections will be organised in line
with amendments to the current electoral law, the statement reads.
(hina) rml sb