ZAGREB, April 1, 2019 – Elections for councils and individual representatives representing national minorities in local communities throughout Croatia will be held on 5 May, in compliance with a recent decision made by the government, however, they seem to be overshadowed by preparations for the elections for the European Parliament, set for 26 May.
In Croatia, members of 14 ethnic minorities are eligible to elect 515 councils, whereas members of 20 minorities can elect 144 individual representatives.
Councils representing an ethnic minority are set up in local communities in which the pertaining minority makes up at least 1.5% of the local population, or if there are more than 200 members of an ethic minority in a municipality or town or more than 500 members in the area of a county. Municipal councils representing ethnic minorities include 10 representatives, city-level councils of this kind consist of 15 representatives and county-level councils include 25 members.
When it comes to the county level, 20 have such councils and their aggregate number is 74 and only Krapina-Zagorje County does not have a sufficient percentage of minorities to have such a representative body. On the other hand, there are eight councils in Istria and Primorje-Gorski Kotar counties each.
The capital city of Zagreb has a total of nine (9) ethnic minority councils representing ethnic Albanians, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Czechs, Hungarians, Macedonians, Roma, Slovenians and Serbs.
As many as 171 cities and 270 municipalities are expected to organise elections for councils representing ethnic minorities’ interests.
If there are at least 100 ethnic minority members living in a local community but not enough for the election of a council, that minority is then eligible to elect its single representative.
Thus, 20 minorities elect their respective 144 representatives in all 21 counties (89 on aggregate) and 54 in cities. Such an election is going to be organised only in one municipality, and that is Matulji where ethnic Italians will elect their single representative.
In the previous elections for ethnic minority councils and representatives which took place in Croatia in May 2015, there were 280,000 eligible voters who were entitled to elect 288 councils and 25,000 eligible voters who could elect individual ethnic representatives.
Elections for ethnic minorities’ councils or representatives were introduced in 2003. All the four previous elections of this kind were marked by a low turnout.
More news about the status of national minorities in Croatia can be found in the Politics section.
