Laws are like sausages: it is better not to see how they are made – said Otto von Bismarck long ago. There is no doubt he was right. However, in this ‘new normal’ era, his statement should not concern us at all. Laws are, in fact, not made at home. They are mostly mixed and seasoned – in Brussels!
Indeed, the part about stuffing the sausages does happen at home, but often without unnecessary questions and comments, more like a manual unquestionable action. How many of the laws we live by and operate under are truly domestic, and how many are merely transcriptions of European Union regulations and directives, is unknown; it is estimated that certainly more than half of them are mixed in the Union’s capital. This is evident, for example, from the terse response of the Ministry of Economy, which states that last year a total of twelve laws within their jurisdiction were adopted, amended, and supplemented, of which six were due to the need for alignment with European legislation.
The Ministry of Construction states that this year they need to adopt six laws, three of which are obligations arising from the withdrawal of funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NPOO) and the implementation of reform measures (Law on Amendments to the Law on Spatial Planning, Law on Amendments to the Law on Construction, Law on Companies in State Ownership), one is being adopted to execute a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (Law on Amendments to the Law on Residential Tenancies), and only for two there is no obligation to align with EU legislation (Law on Amendments to the Law on Managing State Property and Law on Managing and Maintaining Buildings). Thus, two-thirds of the laws come from the European Union.
We Import Everything, Including Laws
Lawyer Danijel Pribanić specifies that there are three basic channels through which laws are ‘imported’ into Croatia. The strongest and most intensive channel is the EU, which began to strengthen with the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) and accession negotiations when we were still a candidate country.
– These laws are constantly aligned with Croatian legal acquis, but as the European Union itself grows and changes, we also introduce new laws, their segments, or amend existing ones; it is a continuous process. For example, although we have our own legal basis for sanctions against Russia, we had to adapt to EU regulations. Or the directive on the balance between work and private life. Although we have our own labor legislation, the Union decided that this element is extremely important, which is why all member states had to incorporate it into their laws – says Pribanić.
The second way of ‘importing’ laws is through regulations of the European Commission that are adopted in areas that are completely within the jurisdiction of the European Union. These are, for example, customs regulations at the Union level or, a more recent example, sanctions against Russia. Such regulations come into force independently of our parliament. The third channel is traditional.
– Here we are talking about the legal-cultural circle to which we belong and the historical legacy, in our case the German and Central European area that preferred Roman law and law in German countries. Specifically, our land registry system is a replica of the system that Austro-Hungary had. This legal heritage is often problematic in practice because most of the land belonged to the German circle, but the entire coast was mostly under Italian influence, consequently also under Roman law, which differs in many respects.
For example, a land registry excerpt according to Roman law treats the land and the building on it as one whole, while Roman law treats the land and the building constructed on it as two separate wholes. Our criminal law is mostly tied to Germanic law, according to which civil proceedings are conducted. The same goes for commercial and contractual law. In the former state, due to Serbia, which was close to France, we also had elements of French law. For example, subrogation as a form of assignment was not common here – details Pribanić, adding that there is also a fourth, ‘soft’ channel of importing law – unofficial – which mostly comes to us through foreign corporations that have opened branches here and where practices from their countries are mirrored.
