Justice for All: We Still Won’t Know Who is Allowed to Bury the Dead

The government has prepared a new Draft Law on Communal Economy. SDP parliamentary representative Marko Vešligaj stated that a multitude of laws are inconsistent with this law, and although he was not specific, we will demonstrate using the example of funeral companies (which include communal companies) that the law will not resolve anything if it is not harmonized with others.

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We wrote about the problem of funeral companies and communal companies that create (dis)loyal competition for them a year and a half ago, but it seems that the law’s proposer (the government) has not learned any lessons from the whole story. Namely, according to the current Law on Funeral Activities (Article 28), the provisions of Articles 3, 10, and 20 of the Law on Communal Economy concerning the transportation of the deceased have ceased to be valid, clearly stating that communal companies do not have the right to perform that activity.

There is no ‘communal company’

These changes have also been included in the Law on Communal Economy, which is still in force, and in which (in Article 3) the services of communal companies are listed exhaustively. It is not stated there that communal companies engage in funeral activities. (This was removed with the enactment of the Law on Funeral Activities.) Therefore, in this sense, these two laws are harmonized, which is why it is really unclear why the new law on communal economy will also deal with whether communal companies will have to reduce funeral services when it is clearly stated in the aforementioned two laws that all those services are being abolished for them.

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Namely, according to the government’s proposal, a public funeral company will only be able to perform burials, while all other services will be taken over by funeral companies (transportation, sale of funeral equipment, floristry, construction of graves, stone-cutting services, and more). Or is it something else, i.e., as if we are returning to old provisions that have already been removed. Despite the legal prohibition, communal companies have continued to perform these jobs without hindrance. They cited as a reason that no law in Croatia recognizes the term ‘communal company’ and that they are actually commercial companies that engage in both communal and other businesses for which they are registered. As commercial companies, communal companies found a loophole in the law by referring to the Law on Commercial Companies (which, accordingly, applies to them) claiming that they can register for any activity, including funeral services. Therefore, when the two laws (on funeral activities and the current one on communal economy) did not suit them, communal companies found an exit in the third one – the Law on Commercial Companies. And now we come to the key issue.

What is the purpose of discussions?

If we consider that the government wants to reduce the funeral services of communal companies with the new law on communal economy (which, in fact, do not exist in the current law, so we cannot talk about reduction, but rather about addition), those who wrote the legal proposal were obviously not well-informed and could not foresee what would happen. Namely, public communal companies, regardless of what the government decides, will continue to engage in all funeral services because they will do the same as they did when voting on the Law on Funeral Activities. They will say: ‘Sorry, folks, but no law recognizes the term ‘communal company’, and according to the Law on Commercial Companies, we have the right to register for any activity, including funeral services.’ A second reading in the Parliament follows, but the new law on communal economy will not resolve this issue, if it remains as it is, without changes to the Law on Commercial Companies. It is a pity that no one in the Parliament has noticed this problem amid all the discussions, nor has the law’s proposer, so that it can finally be defined whether communal companies are allowed to perform this job or not. We do not take a stance; it just needs to be legally resolved to clear the chaos in the market.

POST SCRIPTUM Regarding the case of Jerina Malešević, who lost the right to register her apartment in the land registry despite being first in line, we have already written. She sued the state, but the judge of the Municipal Court in Velika Gorica, Jelena Rajić, did not consider her key evidence, so the County Court in Zagreb ordered that this be done. Recently, Judge Rajić issued a new, better said old, ruling or, even better – a ‘copy-paste’ of the old ruling because despite the order of the higher court, she did not find it necessary to evaluate that evidence. Very strange, we would say, although Malešević believes that the decision of Judge Rajić was also influenced by the fact that the ordeal in the corridors of the judiciary began in 2004 with the intervention of the current president of the Supreme Court, Đuro Sessa – the boss of Jelena Rajić.