Abstract
The language of the Croatian legal system in the first two and half decades of its independence is the one of reform. Significant reforms affected social rights all through this period and beyond. The authors analyse a tool that the state uses in order to reform—the normative process—starting with policy drafting and ending with enforcement of the law. The main purpose of this contribution was to identify four ways in which the quality of the normative activity within a state may threaten social rights. Those four dangers are termind “winds”: (mis)conception, multiplication, acceleration and estrangement. The choice of words is not for poetic purposes. By creating a connection between something that is man-made, apparently under our full control, with a natural phenomenon that comes and goes as it pleases, the authors sought to dispel a very prominent idea in Croatian political circles: that problems in regulation may be cured by better regulation. It is suggested instead that regulating is strongly affected by traditions, ways of thinking and responding that go beyond the halls of the Parliament or the mayor’s office. Those have to be identified and the “sails” of the law adjusted to use them and protect our vital interests from their overreach. This idea may not be novel abroad, but it is practically still to be discovered in Croatia. Until then, it can only be continuously pointed out that only some winds can be deflected by changes in the law itself, with (mis)conception being a good candidate and multiplication a close second. On the other hand, resolution of problems such as acceleration and estrangement pose a question whether a society truly wants to construct a functioning democracy and, secondly, whether it wishes to take social rights as a serious segment of such a democracy.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Puljiz (2001).
- 2.
It has been demonstrated that a legal system only functions effectively as a normative enterprise when it acknowledges deeply ingrained beliefs and behaviours; see Macdonald and Kong (2006).
- 3.
Puljiz (2004), p. 3.
- 4.
Smerdel (2013), p. 100.
- 5.
Sajó (1999), p. 270.
- 6.
Chapter III of the Spanish constitution (BOE, nr. 311 [29 December 1978]), titled “De los principios rectores dela política social y económica” [On Principles governing Economic and Social Policy].
- 7.
For more detail on the Spanish example, see España: Información para el Comité de derechos económicos, sociales y culturales de la ONU [Spain: Report for the UN Committee on economic, social and cultural rights], 48 period of sessions, May 2012, available at http://bit.ly/Iwe0ci, last accessed 22/7/2013.
- 8.
Arts. 48–70 of the Croatian Constitution (Official Gazette Nr. 56/90, 135/97, 8/98 [consolidated text], 113/00, 124/00 [consolidated text], 28/01, 41/01 [consolidated text], 55/01 [correction], 76/10 and 85/10 [consolidated text]), hereinafter the Constitution.
- 9.
Articles 55 and 56 of the Constitution.
- 10.
Note that the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia considers all of these laws as “laws” in terms of its jurisdiction, meaning that it only determines their compatibility with the Constitution, rather than with each other (e.g. it does not establish whether an ordinary law is in line with an organic law). See the decision of the Constitutional Court in U-I-2720/2007, Official Gazette no. 138/08.
- 11.
Article 132(2) of the Constitution.
- 12.
The only truly constitutional law currently in force is the Constitutional Court Act (Official Gazette no. 99/99, 29/02 and 49/02 [consolidated text]). Note that there are other laws that only bear the adjective “constitutional” but have not been enacted in line with the proscribed procedure. For a more detailed discussion on “true” and “false” constitutional laws in Croatia, see Smerdel (2013), pp. 62–64.
- 13.
Article 82 of the Constitution.
- 14.
Article 83(1–2) of the Constitution.
- 15.
Article 83(2) of the Constitution.
- 16.
U-I-2566/2003, U-I-2692/2003 (Official Gazette no. 190/03).
- 17.
Paragraph 7(5) of the Decision.
- 18.
Paragraph 7(7) of the Criminal Law Act case.
- 19.
In the US, the well-known Chadha case expresses some of the confusion brought about by legislative delegation in this sense (Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983)).
- 20.
Article 88(1) of the Constitution.
- 21.
Smerdel (2013), p. 70.
- 22.
Article 88(1) of the Constitution.
- 23.
For a contemporary analysis of this claim in the context of the European Union, see Héritier (2001).
- 24.
Paragraph 9(2) of the decision U-I/2694/2003, Official Gazette no. 20/04.
- 25.
Article 35 of the Constitution.
- 26.
Puljiz (2004), p. 5.
- 27.
For a well-argued criticism of this orthodox position, see O’Cinneide (2012).
- 28.
See e.g. Barić (2009a), p. 259.
- 29.
Manning (1977), p. 767.
- 30.
Cabinet Office and Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, When laws become too complex, Research and analysis conducted in the policy field “Reforming the constitution and political system”, 16 April 2013, available at http://bit.ly/YShJLu, paras 2 and 4.
- 31.
- 32.
Daly (2002), p. 45.
- 33.
- 34.
The debate in Croatian language is available online, at http://bit.ly/160XSHC.
- 35.
Učur, Laleta and Smokvina have already identified this complexity within the social care system. Učur et al. (2011), pp. 677–703.
- 36.
See a search approximating this result at http://bit.ly/1dzzc1N.
- 37.
Official Gazette no. 90/11.
- 38.
Article 2 of the Regulation Impact Assessment Act.
- 39.
Banić (2008), p. 12.
- 40.
Naturally, segments of this debate are intended to occur before the Parliament, given that the tabled legislation has to be justified in some way and both its benefits and possible costs are to be included in the bill. However, for the reasons already detailed above, the parliamentary scrutiny in this sense does not appear to be as strong as it ought to be.
- 41.
Article 3 of the Law. For a more detailed description of these criteria, see the Government’s regulation on carrying out the impact assessment procedure (Official Gazette no. 66/12).
- 42.
See the form attached to already cited Regulation on carrying out the regulatory impact assessment procedure, supra footnote 41.
- 43.
See the Government’s 2013 Normative Activity Plan at http://bit.ly/14cELQH.
- 44.
See the assessment of the current situation in Croatian national theatres contained in the draft amendments to the Law on Theatres, available at http://bit.ly/1MkNfVW.
- 45.
Smerdel (2012), p. 114.
- 46.
See, for example, the already cited discussion on the amendments to the new Labour Act, available at http://bit.ly/160XSHC.
- 47.
Barić (2009b), pp. 207–220.
- 48.
Law Nr. 2003–591 of 2 July 2003 (Loi habilitant le Gouvernement à simplifier le droit).
- 49.
Conseil constitutionnel, decission nr. 99–421, 16 December 1999.
- 50.
- 51.
Smerdel (2013), p. 62.
- 52.
Article 62 of the Standing Orders of the Croatian Parliament, Official Gazette no. 81/13, hereinafter the Standing Orders.
- 53.
See, for instance, www.korekt.hr.
- 54.
Report U-X-80/2005, Official Gazette no. 64/06. However, we should emphasise here that even the Croatian Constitutional Court has unprecedentedly contributed to the general confusion with the use of consolidated texts. Namely, in pursuing its intention to indicate the exact rules of their creation, the Court has produced its own version of the consolidated text of the Constitution itself. Thus, there are now two different publicly available versions of the consolidated Croatian Constitution: one prepared by the Parliament and one published on the Constitutional Court’s official web page. Well-founded criticism of this unacceptable Court’s activism can be seen in Smerdel (2013), pp. 61–62.
- 55.
Chapter II/A of the Standing Orders.
- 56.
Article 158 of the Standing Orders.
- 57.
Some of the consequences have been detailed in a report of the Croatian Constitutional Court (Report U-X/99/2013, Official Gazette no. 12/13, paras 6–7).
- 58.
Article 207 of the Standing Orders.
- 59.
See Article 150 of the Standing Orders of the Congress of Deputies (Reglamente del Congreso de los Diputados de 10 de Febrereo de 1982, available at http://bit.ly/18krouL), and Article 129 the Standing Orders of the Spanish Senate (Reglamento del Senado, available at http://bit.ly/14S4Pz1). Note that the latter even limits the plenary discussion by granting fifteen minutes to each parliamentary group.
- 60.
Lugo (2007), p. 12.
- 61.
Report U-X/99/2013, para 11.
- 62.
Official Gazette no. 150/11.
- 63.
Lugo (2007), p. 7.
- 64.
See the statistical indicators at http://bit.ly/14cJKkn.
- 65.
One example is the Child Allowance Act (Official Gazette Nr. 94/01, 138/06, 107/07, 37/08, 61/11, 112/12).
- 66.
Constitutional Court Report U-X/80/2005, Official Gazette no. 64/06, Section II, paras 1–5. Some requests for a summary enactment procedure have been justified by simply copying the grounds for the procedure from the Standing Orders into the draft bill, while others have used reasons that simply do not demonstrate sufficient urgency, such as “achieving savings”, with the enforcement of the law that was supposed to meet this goal entering into force only at a significantly later time after it was passed in a summary enactment procedure.
- 67.
Article 143b of the Standing orders of the Slovene Parliament (Poslovnik državnega zbora, available at http://bit.ly/1wTukQA).
- 68.
Article 142b of the Standing orders of the Slovene Parliament.
- 69.
Standing Orders, Article 206.
- 70.
See the statistics of the Slovene Parliament at http://bit.ly/1EuU3kJ.
- 71.
European Commission, European Governance: A White paper. COM (2001) 428 final, OJ 2001/C 287/01.
- 72.
This picture may be changed to some extent if referenda and other tools of direct democracy are employed, but the problem is that they are often expensive, sometimes hard to use regularly because of the demanding procedure and, finally, always unfavourable for deliberation of more complex issues. Their requirement that every issue be reduced to a binary yes-no, black-white, up-down selection simplifies complex realities and may endanger social cohesion and human rights. The most recent example of a referendum initiative seeking to introduce a definition of marriage into the Croatian Constitution is a case in point. Croatia anti-gay marriage petition sparks fear of intolerance, GlobalPost.com, June 13, 2013, available at http://bit.ly/12WnCYI.
- 73.
Bignami (2003), pp. 1–16.
- 74.
Psygkas (2010), pp. 719–759.
- 75.
Official Gazette, Nr. 25/13.
- 76.
Article 11(4) of the Law on Access to Information.
- 77.
Official Gazette, Nr. 140/09, hereinafter the Code on consultation.
- 78.
Article 11(2) of the Act.
- 79.
Još jedno igranje skrivača Ministarstva kulture sa zainteresiranom javnošću [Another hide and seek arranged by the Ministry of Culture for the interested public], Moderna vremena info, 1 April 2013, available at http://bit.ly/1MmV0ge.
- 80.
Opačić (2013).
- 81.
See, e.g. Barić and Dobrić (2012).
- 82.
Decision in the case U-II/1118/2013, Official Gazette no. 63/13.
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Barić, S., Miloš, M. (2016). Social Rights in the Republic of Croatia: Scattered to the Four Winds of Regulation. In: Bodiroga-Vukobrat, N., Rodin, S., Sander, G. (eds) New Europe - Old Values?. Europeanization and Globalization, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02213-0_7
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