Movimiento por la Paz

Although the country is trying to accomplish the standards of EU, the law on Free Legal Aid is drafted from 2005 and the NGOs do not agree on the contents of the bill

The Republic of Croatia currently does not have the Law on Free legal aid. The final draft was made on September of 2005 and is still in procedure, although the institute of free legal aid is partially mentioned in the Laws regarding Court proceedings, lawyers, and criminal law. However, the institute itself is not incorporated in the Croatian legal system. As it is now, it is even in conflict with the constitution, because the law on attorneys states that to have free legal aid in Croatia you have to have a Croatian citizenship, which is in conflict with the principles of equality.

The accessibility of courts and other bodies which decide on citizens rights is extremely important. Every person must have a real and effective opportunity to protect his or her rights in legal proceedings and to obtain the appropriate legal protection. The human right to a fair trial implies a duty of the state to provide a well-functioning system of legal aid for citizens who, due to their financial status or for some other reasons, are prevented from exercising their rights in legal proceedings in accordance with substantive law provisions.

It is therefore extremely important to adequately regulate the system for providing free legal aid. The efficiency and quality of such a system are also important right now for Croatia in order to meet the preconditions for accession to the European Union.

Although its intention and aim is to ensure the right to a fair trial, the final draft of the Act on Exercising the Right to Legal Aid is inadequate, it has several defects and must be extensively amended, according to many NGOs in Croatia that are dealing with free legal activities. There are many reasons why this bill may potentially worsen the present situation instead of improving it. Correcting the bill’s defects might, however, require more time and money than if it were to be drafted from scratch.

The proposed bill does not establish a unified and integrated system, thereby impeding harmonisation of individual elements and monitoring of the costs and effects of the new system. Also, the bill was drawn up without any prior gathering of the relevant information, and without any realistic assessment of the overall future costs of the new system.

The international standards have been wrongly interpreted in the bill, as has the law of the European Union with which it is to be harmonised. Related to this, the bill has not been harmonised with other laws and legal acts, and its adoption would lead to legal uncertainty.

The bill is incomplete, i.e. some essential elements of the system are left to be regulated by later implementation regulations, and it is therefore impossible to say how the system of legal aid will function when the Act comes into effect.

Also, the bill opts for a rigid and bureaucratised system that is very complex and onerous for its beneficiaries and unwelcome to those who are to implement it, thus making it very difficult to accomplish its goal of protecting citizens’ interests.