The court's president Mirko Zovko told a news conference in Banja Luka on Tuesday that imposing the Orthodox New Year as a public holiday would be discrimination against other ethnic groups and religious communities.
The Constitutional Court made this ruling at the request of a group of Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) deputies in the entity's parliament. They appealed the previous decision by parliament on the new public holiday after their motion to declare the New Year, observed by the Islamic community, as another public holiday, was not supported by the law-making body.