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Croatia Will Not Decide on ‘lex Perković’ for Several More Weeks

The Croatian government will certainly not decide on ‘lex Perković’ for several more weeks, but the Croatian Minister of Justice will respond to the letter from European Commissioner Viviane Reding, stated Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanović in Graz.

The European Commission has never discussed this matter, but our minister will respond to the letter from the European Commissioner, however, one thing is certain, and that is that the government will not decide on this in the next few weeks, said Milanović after a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Slovenian Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek in Graz.

No one in Europe is discussing this issue, and thus Chancellor Faymann learned about it quite by chance. The European Arrest Warrant represents an exception in Europe as it is applied differently. Austria, for example, as an old member, has the possibility of exemption, while Croatia and Slovenia do not, and that right of exemption is eternal. Croatia does not evade but respects that warrant, but will seek for this issue to be discussed in the European Council itself, said Milanović.

He emphasized that Croatia will patiently, but reasonably lobby for the arrest warrant to be applied equally to all member states.

At midnight, the deadline expires for official Zagreb to respond to the European Commission’s question of when it plans to align Croatian law on the European Arrest Warrant with European legislation, but as of 2 PM, the Ministry of Justice could not confirm whether the letter had been sent to Brussels.

Croatia adopted a law at the end of June, colloquially called ‘lex Perković’, which limits the application of the European Arrest Warrant to crimes committed after August 2002.

European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding wrote in a letter to Croatian Minister of Justice Orsat Miljenić at the end of July that what Croatia did on June 28, by adopting an amendment to the law on the European Arrest Warrant, is not in accordance with European legislation and that this needs to be corrected.