Civil unions were first introduced in 2014.
By the end of last year, 174 same-sex civil unions were entered into in Croatia. Most of them (110) have been registered in Zagreb. There have also been six official “divorces”. Last week, a couple from Split filed for dissolution of their union, and before that five couples in Zagreb did the same. The procedure is not complicated and everything can be taken care of in a few minutes, reports Index.hr on February 22, 2017.
The Ministry of Administration have been keeping records about “life partnerships” of same-sex couples since the entry into force of the Law on Life Partnership, which was adopted while the Ministry was led by Arsen Bauk (SDP), who personally attended the first “gay wedding” in Zagreb on 5 September 2014. On behalf of the government led by Zoran Milanović, he gave the couple two ties as a present.
Soon after, three additional ceremonies were held in Zagreb, and one each in Dubrovnik and Split. The first “divorce” took place in May 2015 in Zagreb. After nine months of being in a union, two gay women decided to go their separate ways.
In the first 16 months of the implementation of the Law on Life Partnership, 108 couples entered into a civil union, with the majority doing so in Zagreb (71). In this period, Primorje-Gorski Kotar County recorded 11 unions, Istria County 8, Split-Dalmatia County 6, Osijek-Baranja County 4, with gay marriages also being recorded in Dubrovnik-Neretva, Varaždin, Krapina-Zagorje, Koprivnica-Križevci, Šibenik-Knin and Vukovar-Srijem counties.
In 2016, first gay marriages were recorded in Lika-Senj County, Bjelovar-Bilogora County and Brod-Posavina County. In all, 66 gay marriages were recorded in 2016, most of them in Zagreb (39). In some counties, like for example in Dubrovnik-Neretva County, there were no same-sex civil unions in 2016.
Interestingly, many civil unions include foreigners. Most of them (63) are unions with one partner coming from abroad. However, there are also unions in which both partners are foreigners. So far, there have been a total of nine such unions, and most of them were entered into in Zagreb.
Statistics show that men are slightly more likely to enter into a same-sex civil union. In 2014 and 2015, there were six more same-sex civil unions with male partners then with female ones, while in 2016 there were four more male unions.
