Chapter 4: Croatia

(continued)

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Achievements

There has been a significant change in circumstances since 1995, the period in which the previous Country Report was written. Due to the ongoing war in Croatia, development and construction projects that normally pose major environmental threats were still rather rare. Meanwhile, legal tools applicable to environmental matters have been developed, but so have the problems. The pressure that growing development poses on the environment, sometimes accompanied by misuses of power or corruption, requires a tough response by all environmental subjects involved.

Numerous legislative changes have occurred since 1993 that substantially affect the role that the public can play in the environmental decisionmaking processes. It is particularly important that changes are largely initiated by international treaties, provisions of which are being implemented in the domestic legal system and approaching best existing international standards. Despite the fact that the practical benefits of these laws are still to be fully realized, the recently created legislative system is undoubtedly offering a wider range of opportunities.

The Law on Environmental Protection is a substantial national source of environmental law. It is characterized by the inclusion of numerous canons of contemporary environmental law such as consideration of alternatives, access to environmental information, polluter pays principle, mitigation, public participation in environmental decisionmaking, PRTRs and obligation to prepare the environmental impact assessment. In terms of public participation in environmental decisionmaking, Article 49 of the law should become a major legal background for future access to environmental information in the public participation process.

Concerning concrete cases of public participation in Croatia, there is definite progress. Thus, for example, the satisfactory outcome of several major cases such as the Lukovo Sugarje coal power plant have acted as milestones for more successful future actions. The public participation methods that have been used proved very successful in creating a positive public atmosphere.

Problems

The common impression is that the writers of the Law on Environmental Protection have done a much better job at a declarative level than in terms of enforcement, which is rather typical for Croatian environmental laws and regulations. Thus, the initial enthusiasm one may have upon reading these laws suddenly disappears in the careful search for a "law to apply." Other obstacles to enforcement are ambiguities and lack of coordination with traditional legislation. Consequently, when a remedy has to be sought within the civil, criminal or administrative laws because of a failure to enforce certain public participation or environmental provisions, neither legal theory nor practice provides an adequate solution.

As mentioned earlier in this report, another problem is that it takes too long to implement international treaties, which certainly impairs their purposefulness.

Looking again at the practice of public participation, the experience and lessons learned from different cases show that the lack of due information on legal opportunities may fatally impact the outcome of any environmental action. Another experience is that once the public takes a desirable stand toward the problem, these achievements must be followed by efficient and enforceable legal action. This is the stage of the public participation procedure when serious obstacles begin. Pursuant to the results of several existing cases, officials in both administrative and judicial practice will often decide against environmental initiatives due to insufficiency of adequate precedents.

Needs

The fact that Croatia is still outside the European integration process and, therefore, cut off from environmental funding such as the Phare Program is definitely a handicapping circumstance for domestic NGOs. That is the reason many well-conceived environmental programs never get further than the early stages. Comprehensive endeavors, primarily by the government, are necessary to bypass such a substantial obstacle.

In many cases, NGOs and citizens have sufficient resources and energy to undertake certain actions, but suffer from a lack of adequate expert knowledge, especially in terms of legal assistance. That situation might be largely mitigated by the introduction of public participation tools that already exist in some - particularly western - countries. For instance, legal advisory services which offer help free of charge, or publication of plain language guidelines on available legal and/or public participation opportunities would surely serve the purpose.

The issue of challenging authorities on the issuance of laws or regulations is especially interesting. In Croatia, it is hardly recorded that anyone has taken legal action against governmental bodies in order to compel them on legislative activities. One possible reason for that lies in the mindset established during the years of communism, where no one would dare to undertake any such activity. Governmental decisions were simply out of the question and therefore inaccessible. Bridging the mental barrier that both government and opponents of its behavior still harbor would be a crucial step forward.

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