ZAGREB, 14 April, 2021 - The Croatian government is due to call local elections for 16 May at its meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

Croatian citizens will be choosing executive and legislative authorities in 576 local and regional government units  - mayors, county prefects and their deputies as well as local councils and county assemblies.

Compared with the elections held four years ago, there will be 568 fewer deputy mayors and about 10 percent fewer members of local councils and county assemblies.

The number of local councils and county assemblies depends on the size of the population of the unit concerned. Units with a population of up to 1,000 will have the fewest representatives (7), while those with a population of 300,000 and over will have the most (47). 

The number of deputies also depends on the size of the population of a given unit. Counties with more than 250,000 inhabitants will chose two deputy prefects and cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants will choose two deputy mayors. Counties with a population of less than 250,000 are entitled to one deputy prefect, and cities with a population of between 10,000 and 100,000 and those that also serve as the centre of their county will have one deputy mayor. Towns and municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants are not entitled to a deputy mayor.

Candidates for mayors and county prefects have to receive more than 50% of votes of the voters who have taken part in the election to be elected outright. If none of the candidates in a given unit obtains the necessary majority, two of the candidates with the largest number of votes go into a second round of voting, which will be held on 30 May.

Unlike presidential or parliamentary elections, in local elections voters can vote only in their place of residence and not elsewhere, either in Croatia or abroad.

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ZAGREB, 12 April, 2021 - Tomislav Tomašević, the candidate for Zagreb Mayor of the We Can/Zagreb is Ours! platforms on Monday presented candidates for his deputies, Danijela Dolenec and Luka Korlaet.

"I truly believe that we will be a great team that will run the city well and improve the quality of life for its residents," Tomašević told a news conference.

Dolenec is a reader at the Zagreb Faculty of Political Science, an award-winning researcher and founder of the We Can! and Zagreb is Ours! platforms, while Korlaet is a senior lecturer at the Zagreb Faculty of Architecture.

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ZAGREB, 9 April (Hina) - A government representative on Friday accepted amendments by the ruling HDZ party group to a bill on local elections which ease previously proposed stricter rules for the nomination of candidates in elections and reasons for the termination of a local official's term.

A regulation has been eased under which a person with a final court verdict sentencing them to a prison term of at least six months or whose verdict has been changed to community service and a conditional verdict will be banned from running in elections, starting already with the May 16 local election.

The HDZ parliamentary group proposed that the ban should not apply to persons sentenced to prison for an unintentional crime, if their sentence has been changed to community service or a conditional sentence.

Also accepted were amendments that relax reasons for the termination of the term of a member of a representative body, municipal head, mayor and county head and their deputies.

If those officials have committed an unintentional crime and have been sentenced to prison but their sentence has been changed to community service or a conditional sentence, the terms of those officials will not cease, government representative Sanjin Rukavina said.

He did not accept Social Democrat MP Arsen Bauk's amendment under which those officials' terms would end also in case the party which has nominated them and on whose slates they have been elected has been given a final court verdict for an offence.

The government partially accepted amendments by the SDP, GLAS and Centre party groups under which the term of a member of a representative body, municipal head, mayor and county head stops on the day when they deregister their residence in their local government unit.

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ZAGREB, 8 April, 2021 - Homeland Movement leader Miroslav Škoro said on Thursday that if elected Mayor of Zagreb, he would deal with the problem of the city's Jakuševec landfill and close it down.

"We should do all we can to ensure that the residents in this part of Zagreb no longer have to live near a landfill with an unpleasant smell in the air," Škoro said in Jakuševec.

He said that about 110,000 tonnes of biodegradable waste is disposed of in Jakuševec annually, including 60,000 tonnes of household waste that produces an unpleasant smell in the air. "There is no need for that," he added.

Škoro said that Zagreb had such potential for compost production that it could earn HRK 35 million from it annually. He also warned that Zagreb spent HRK 25 million on disposal of plastic waste, while with proper management it could earn HRK 100 million from it.

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March 30, 2021 - The talk of the new marina for super yachts in Rijeka, Porto Baroš, brings both the hype of development and concerns for public interest.

Porto Baroš in Rijeka, a marina with the potential of 500 ties, is the subject of a public call to be assigned the concession for the next 30 years. The call offers the possibility of expanding to the travel port's entire area, reports the Rijeka-based Novi List daily newspaper. The call was open a month ago. The decision is expected to be known in the following ten days, after which the Ministry of Sea, Transport, and Infrastructure will decide to assign the concession that will be delivered to the Croatian government.

The trading company ACI-Gitone, owned by ACI (Adriatic Croatia International Club) and Lürssen (German yacht company), answered the public call with an investment offer of 363,7 million kunas.

As Novi List learns, ACI- Gitone plans to ask for the expansion of concession to the area owned by Rijeka Port Authority and currently functions as „the port for big yachts". If approved, the Rijeka marina would become the biggest in all of Croatia.

Oleg Butković, minister of the Sea, Transport, and Infrastructure, is very happy about the offer of ACI-Gitone.

„This investment makes me happy as we know that with such a marina capable of hosting megayachts comes a series of additional services. Rijeka and its surroundings must take such opportunity", said minister Butković.

Mayoral candidate critical of the offer

On the other hand, the left-green party Možemo! (We can!) mayoral candidate for Rijeka Nebojša Zelić is opposed to the investment, says Novi List.

Zelić adds he has no problem with the concession for Baroš, but he has issues with the idea of expanding concession to the larger area of Travel coast and Molo Longo.

Nebojša Zelić, screenshot / Možemo! Politička platforma

„This is against public interest given that the concession is given to a minimum of 30 years and there is a possibility that the citizens could be denied access to the sea. That's problematic as it opposes the law of concessions which forbids changing the subject of the public call and in this case that is the expansion of the concession", said Zelić.

He points out that Rijeka's waterfront and Molo Longo unlike Baroš are not nautical tourism and that experience showed how much these places are valuable to the locals. „If these places are shabby, that's the problem of bad management by Rijeka's Port Authority and citizens can't be the hostages of bad management by the Port and the City of Rijeka", said Zelić. He also accused the leading party Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) for controlling the most valuable city property through Port Authorities. Zelić's party colleague Sandra Benčić said that the current General Urban plan in Rijeka disables nautical tourism port on Rijeka's waterfront and Moro Longo. She says that can change and that HDZ is counting on it if they get the majority in the city council on the upcoming local elections in May.

„I believe that Rijeka citizens will know to say no to denying access to the sea. We will publicly step out in front of the government to disrupt the expansion of the concession and prevent HDZ's interest being above the public's interest, and we will fight in the parliament too", announced Benčić.

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ZAGREB, 19 March, 2021 - Jelena Pavičić Vukičević on Thursday accepted the nomination by the Bandić Milan 365 - Labour and Solidarity party to run for Zagreb mayor at the local election in May.

After a meeting of the party's presidency, Pavičić Vukičević said that she would lead the party to victory.

After Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić's death, his deputy and long time associate Pavičić Vukičević stepped in as acting mayor until the election.

Jelena Pavičić Vukičević was Bandić's associate from the very start of his career and she herself has had many years of experience in the city's administration.

When Banidć was elected for his first term as mayor in 2000, she was the secretary of the Zagreb branch of the Social Democratic Party and a councillor in the city assembly. Three years later she was elected to parliament and in 2008 she was appointed as the head of the City office for education, culture and sports. From 2009 to 2013 she was appointed as Bandic's deputy mayor. In the 2017 local election, she was directly elected as deputy mayor of Zagreb.

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ZAGREB, 16 March, 2021 - The State Electoral Commission (DIP) has advised companies and citizens who intend to make a donation to participants running in the May local election, to respect the law and take note of the maximum allowable amount that may be donated.

All physical and legal persons intending to donate money, products or services are obliged to register all the relevant information and should be issued with a receipt by the recipient party or independent slate.

Donors must not have any debts to the state or local authorities.

If donations are made in products, then the value of these must be identified.

The maximum amount of a donation for physical entities is HRK 30,000 and for legal entities HRK 200,000. Donations can be made once or in several instalments and must be pad into a separate electioneering account.

Contracts for donations greater than HRK 5,000

Donations of HRK 5,000 or more require a contract to be concluded between the donor and recipient (party or independent slate).

DIP has published guidelines regarding the financing of electioneering which are available at its website.

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ZAGREB, 9 March, 2021 - Representatives of the Social Democratic Party, the Croatian Pensioners' Party, the Primorje-Gorski Kotar Alliance, the Istrian Democratic Party and the Croatian Peasant Party on Tuesday agreed to run together in local elections set for May, their candidate for county head being Zlatko Komadina.

Social Democrat Komadina, who serves as the head of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, said the six-party coalition had decided to stay together after its current term as the ruling coalition at the county level.

Darijo Vasilić, leader of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar Alliance (PGS), said that the coalition had implemented 84 EU-funded projects worth HRK 300 million, investing in infrastructure, ports, the school system, health and other activities within the remit of county authorities.

Komadina said his SDP party would run in all 36 local government units in the county, nominating its own candidates for mayors or municipal heads or supporting PGS or independent candidates.

 For more about politics in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

TCN's Vukovar resident Deane Thomas takes a look at what's going on with the local elections in Vukovar.

It was previously announced that Member of Parliament Ivan Pernar would be Živi Zid’s candidate.