on 20 December 2022
Participants in the workshop were Professor Aleksandra Korać Graovac, Professor Đorđe Gardašević, Professor Frane Staničić, Associate Professor Aleksandar Maršavelski, Associate Professor Henrik-Riko Held and Professor Dalibor Čepulo as the workshop moderator, all affiliates of the Faculty of Law in Zagreb. Workshop consisted of an introduction of the moderator and three 15-20 minute contributions in panel 1 and another two contributions in panel 2 that were followed by a general discussion at the end. The audience consisted of professors and students, including Erasmus students. The workshop lasted till 14 o’clock.
In a short introduction the moderator stressed the importance of discussion on legal regulation of symbols that should reconsider present discussion and offer new opinions and approaches to the existing problems. Đorđe Gardašević in his lecture stressed a fact that the preamble of the Croatian Constitution defines the Republic of Croatia as the nation-state of the Croatian people, while Article 1 of the Constitution defines it on the basis of popular sovereignty with the power belonging to all citizens granted full equality. This double definition is reflected in the practice of the Constitutional Court in the decision on the right of equal use of Cyrillic alphabet that is balanced with a right of the majority nation for a respect of its historical experiences and attitudes. Still, understanding of the ‘people’ as a demos far prevail in the practice of the Court. Aleksandar Maršavelski gave a review of the current Croatian criminal legislation on the symbols based on the new approaches included in a recent novel of the Criminal Law that particularly stressed a role of hate speech without a former particular protection granted to the dignity of the Croatian nation and dignity of the national minorities. Henrik-Riko Held gave a historical introduction of a regulation of cultural goods at international level and at the national level with particular emphasis on the regulation in Austria- Hungary that due to its multicultural composition aimed to protect all cultural goods regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliation, as a beginning of the modern Croatian regulation. He presented a current
Croatian regulation as being based on a non-ethnic understanding of the cultural goods of national importance, being based instead on a counter-pairing on regional – national and not ethnic – national meaning. Aleksandra Korać Graovac pointed to the absence of any particular regulation of religious symbols in the Croatian Civil law legislation yet pointing to a substitutive respective judicial practice, primarily present in the practice of the European Court that can effectively serves as a sufficient ground for such protection in Croatia. She still opened a possibility that these issues can be regulated by the Croatian legislation as well. Frane Staničić presented rather extensive and strict regulation on the symbols of national minorities and pointed to the almost complete absence of such regulation of religious symbols, both being determined by political determinants. Yet, he opted against special legal regulation on the use of religious symbols appealing to the Constitutional provision of the separation of church and state as well as to the potential problems of misunderstandings and tensions in society that such regulation could produce.
General discussion reflected to all lectures and particular emphasis was given to the religious and constitutional issues. A short polemics took part with a regard to the necessity of legal regulation of the use of religious symbols. Apart of that the question of adequacy of definition of the Republic of Croatia as the national state (and similar definitions in most of the post-Yugoslav states, except Kosovo and Montenegro) was discussed especially in regard to the ‘conventional” negative approach to such definition by large number of constitutional experts. Anyway, discussion indicated an agreement on usefulness of such definition in the historical circumstances of the reality of post-Yugoslav states. Interest of the audience showed in discussion extended the projected time for the workshop until 14 o’clock.
