Croatia Replies to Questionnaire on 3Rd PR
Strasbourg, 21 May 2007 MIN-LANG/PR (2006) 4 Addendum 2 EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR REGIONAL OR MINORITY LANGUAGES Third Periodical Report presented to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in accordance with Article 15 of the Charter CROATIA Replies to Comments/questions submitted to the Government of Croatia regarding its Third Periodical Report Preliminary Section 1. Before the Republic of Croatia became independent, the Constitution of the former state guaranteed the status of a constitutive nation to Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Bosniaks (which were at that time called "Muslims"). The status of a national minority in the former state was enjoyed by: Italians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, the Roma, Ukrainians, Albanians, Vlachs and Jews. After independence, the Republic of Croatia granted the status of a national minority to the existing national minorities and to all the constitutive nations from the territory of the former state. With the adoption of the Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities, which recognised the status of a national minority to each ethnic group guided by the wish for the preservation of its special characteristics, the number of national minorities in Croatia increased, so there are 22 national minorities in Croatia today. On the basis of the Constitution of the former state and the Public Administration Act, which was then in force, in 1981 the Decree on the manner of, and the conditions for the use of languages and scripts of national minorities in proceedings before public administration bodies and organisations vested with public authority was passed ( Official Gazette , no.
[Show full text]