‘The Deadline for Legalization’

The Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning reminds all owners of illegal buildings for which a demolition order has been issued by the construction inspection by August 4 of this year that the deadline for submitting applications for legalization for these buildings is December 31, 2012, and that after this deadline, applications can no longer be submitted.

According to the Ministry’s data, there are 31 thousand buildings in Croatia with a demolition order from the construction inspection.

Applicants who do not gather all the necessary documentation by December 31 are encouraged by the relevant ministry to submit their application on time regardless and to supplement it later. This is enabled by the General Administrative Procedure Act, which provides for the possibility of supplementing the submission, and the administrative body that resolves the application should not reject an incomplete application but should give the applicant a deadline in which they are obliged to complete it, the Ministry states.

The deadline for submitting applications for the legalization of illegal buildings for which no demolition order has been issued by the construction inspection expires on June 30, 2013.

This deadline applies to illegal buildings constructed before June 21, 2011, which do not have a demolition order and which can be seen on the digital orthophoto map of the State Geodetic Administration taken from the air on that date. Buildings constructed illegally after that date cannot be legalized.

According to information from the Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning, since the new legalization law came into force at the beginning of September until mid-November, nearly 22 thousand applications for legalization have been received, while during the one-year validity of the previous law, 15,205 applications were submitted.

The total number of applications received under both laws by mid-November amounts to 37,131.