Elections for the European Parliament should be separated from local elections to avoid the possible miscommunication of pre-election messages to the citizens, representatives of GONG warned the President Ivo Josipović, who began consultations on the date of the euro-elections. At the end of the week Croatian citizens should know the date of the first elections…
New FoIA – A Step towards Open Government
On February 15 2013, Croatian Parliament adopted a new Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), following a decade of advocacy, public campaigns, research, law amendments and public discussions. During its long-term monitoring of implementation and research on FoIA implementation in Croatia (researches available on Croatian here), active participation in the working group for FoIA amendments back…
“New Bill Opens the Door to New Criminal Privatization”
Several civil society organizations, asked by the H-Alter.org portal to give their assessment on the Draft-Law on Strategic Investments, submitted for adoption last week, in an urgent procedure, comment that it would lead the country into a second round of robber-baron privatization and ensures a shortcut to exploitation of natural wealth and resources of the…
How will Civil Society Organisations survive Croatia accession to EU
In conditions of pan-European economic crisis afflicting the entire European Union, European Social Fund represents a particularly valuable source of funding for the programs that contribute to mitigation of negative consequences and provision of new opportunities to the particularly vulnerable social groups in the field of employment, education, social welfare etc In order to reduce…
Transparency in retrospect: Croatia towards EU
The following is a discussion of the issue of transparency of Croatia’s accession process to the EU, presented from the perspective of non-state, civil society actors, whose insight into the interior dynamics of negotiations, primarily engaging the European Commission and the Croatian Government, was highly limited during the process. The key challenge encountered was discrepancy…
The first step of electoral reform
Package of laws regulating the electoral process is only the first step in the fulfillment of one of the campaign promises – a comprehensive and systematic reform of the electoral legislation. GONG is pleased with the positive advances that new electoral laws bring, but wants to point out the outstanding issues and the risks to…