ZAGREB, April 6, 2018 – An umbrella association of Croats who live in Slovenia warned on Friday of their undefined status as a minority and called on the executive and legislative authorities in the country to regulate their constitutional and legal status.
“Despite years of efforts, the Croat national community in Slovenia, as an autochthonous minority, still has not been constitutionally recognised as a minority. Slovenia has not taken account of recommendations by the Council of Europe and relevant United Nations bodies, which are the international legal basis for the protection of minority rights in accordance with the highest international standards,” reads a press release signed by Đanino Kutnjak, president of the Alliance of Croatian Associations in Slovenia, and presidents of about 15 other Croatian cultural associations in Slovenia.
“We believe that, as members of a national community that has lived in Slovenia for centuries and has thus proven its loyalty to Slovenia, and due to friendship and co-existence of the Croat and Slovene peoples, we deserve recognition, respect and support by the Slovenian state. We firmly believe that regulating the status of Croats in Slovenia as a national minority would contribute to good neighbourly relations between the two countries and help build even stronger bridges of friendship between Slovenia and Croatia,” the press release said.
In its constitution adopted in 1992, Slovenia guaranteed representation in parliament only for the Italian minority living in the area bordering with Italy and the Hungarian minority in the northeast of the country. The two minorities each elect one MP in the 90-member parliament. The Roma, too, have a special status and can elect a councillor in local government units which have a larger Roma community.
The more numerous minorities from the former Yugoslavia have not been granted such a status or minority rights. The usual explanation by officials is that they are “new” or “not autochthonous” minorities and are a result of migrations in the past century. If any of those minorities were to be given autochthonous minority status, they say, this would lead to similar demands by other minorities, and for such a move, it would be difficult to secure the two-thirds majority support in parliament required to amend the constitution.
This refers to the Croat community too and according to statistics their number has diminished compared to the late 1980s, when about 54,000 Croats lived in Slovenia and when they were the largest minority. According to the 1991 census, there were 53,000 Croats in Slovenia, whereas in 2001 that number was 36,000. In the last census, conducted in 2011, declaring one’s ethnicity was not obligatory, but it was noted that the share of Croats in the population was 1.8%, which is about 35,000.
