Croatia: Bilingual signs "remain open issue"

Croatia: Bilingual signs "remain open issue"

ZAGREB -- The decision of the Constitutional Court of Croatia on a proposed "referendum on Cyrillic" has left the status of bilingual signs in Vukovar "unresolved."

The Croatian daily Slobodna Dalmacija thus writes that recently a Vukovar court filed charges against 22 people suspected of destroying and breaking the signs written in Croatian, and in Serbian Cyrillic.

But, it added, it is "still unclear whether the bilingual inscriptions will remain on state institutions, and if their removal and destruction constituted a criminal offense."

Lawyer Veljko Miljević told the newspaper that the government was authorized to place the signs, and that those who removed and destroyed them "did something that is illegal," but believes that the suspects may claim that they had "no illegal awareness because of all the circumstances that accompany this situation."

"No decision has the property of legal validity and enforceability and I cannot accurately take a stance on these issues, but I think that the further breaking of signs would also be illegal. I think all this must be contained in the final part of the decision of the Constitutional Court, because each of its decisions influences individual acts that were enacted prior to this decision" - he was quoted as saying.

According to the lawyer, "if someone were to now again destroy the bilingual signs, they could defend themselves by quoting the decision of the Court which sets the time limit of one year for the government and the local government to arrange this issue."

The Croatian Constitutional Court ruled on Monday as unconstitutional and impermissible the proposed referendum question on the Cyrillic...