Description

Unrealised Rights and Failed Policies 3

Recognising the under-representation of minorities in the bodies of public authorities as one of the most problematic and challenging issues in the realisation of minority rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities (CARNM), the Serb National Council has, since 2008, continuously monitored the level of representation and the exercise of the related right of priority in employment of members of national minorities in these state bodies under equal conditions.

At the end of 2024, building on the previously prepared and published thematic analyses from 2014 and 2017, the Serb National Council produced a new analysis on the representation of national minorities in state administration bodies and the judiciary of the Republic of Croatia. The Serb National Council notes that this analysis was deliberately prepared with a time gap twice as long as the one between the publication of the previous two. Namely, taking into account the trends identified during the periods covered by the earlier analyses, it seemed unrealistic to expect significant changes or progress in achieving the right to appropriate representation in just three or four years. In doing so, consideration was also given to the fact that the Government of the Republic of Croatia’s Operational Programmes for National Minorities for the period 2017 — 2020 and the Operational Programmes for National Minorities for the period 2021 — 2024 defined specific activities for improving the monitoring of representation and employment of national minorities with the aim of consistent implementation of legal provisions, i.e. the appropriate realisation of legally guaranteed rights. Furthermore, the intention of the Serb National Council was to examine the state of the exercise of this right in the context of the results of the 2021 population census and the possible, albeit somewhat expected, changes in the ethnic structure of the population in the country. Accordingly, this latest analysis focuses on the period 2017 — 2023. The data analysed on the representation of national minorities overall, and of Serbs specifically, were collected from relevant state bodies and from publicly available reports and other documents of the Government of the Republic of Croatia.

Unfortunately, despite the adoption and implementation of new targeted measures to improve representation, the results of the latest analysis, as with the previous two, show that the policies and measures of the Government of the Republic of Croatia in the period under review failed to reverse or halt the previously existing trends of maintaining the state of under-representation at roughly the same level or even deepening it.
Data on representation in state administration bodies and professional services and offices of the Government of the Republic of Croatia as of 31 December 2023 show that national minorities account for a total of 2.92% of employees in these bodies, while the representation of Serbs specifically stands at 1.83%. The significant under-representation of minorities in these bodies is evident when these figures are compared with the results of the 2021 reference population census, according to which national minorities make up 6.20% of the population of the Republic of Croatia, and Serbs 3.20%. Under-representation of national minorities is also visible in the judiciary. National minorities account for 2.60% overall and Serbs 1.88% of officials in the courts; 3.07% and 1.84%, respectively, of officials in state attorney’s offices; while among civil servants, employees and trainees in the courts and state attorney’s offices, the figures are 2.60% and 1.37%, respectively.

It was observed that an appropriate analysis of the state of representation in some of the analysed bodies is still hampered by certain inconsistencies and discrepancies in identical data reported by different bodies, highlighting the need to establish and apply a unified methodology for monitoring, analysing and using data on the representation of minorities, modelled on the previously established methodology for monitoring the exercise of the right of priority and employment of members of national minorities.

Considering that the Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities has been in force for more than twenty years, and that previously adopted policies have not yielded the proclaimed results, it seems reasonable to ask whether the right to proportional representation in the state administration and judiciary guaranteed by law is achievable at all, or whether it will remain forever a subject of analyses of unrealised minority rights.