Croatia's 151-seat Parliament on Thursday passed the bill on the construction of the liquefied natural gas terminal, dubbed in the media Lex LNG, with 77 votes in favour and 25 against. The vote came after weeks of heated debates and despite vehement opposition of the local communities on the island of Krk where the terminal is to be built.

Unhappy because the bill was put through fast track legislation procedure, instead going through the regular two readings in Parliament, the opposition Social Democratics (SDP) had submitted a whopping 360 amendments to the law, with all of them turned down.

The Parliament’s debate over the amendments last week lasted for almost six hours straight, and ahead of voting on the amendments today, Speaker of Parliament, Gordan Jandrokovic (HDZ) suggested that in order to speed up the process, instead of MPs voting electronically, the vote on each amendment do manually.

The populist Most party MPs walked out, in protest of the rushed voting method. They were later followed by five other independent and opposition MPs.

Even though the initiative for the amendments came from SDP, at the start of the voting process, the majority of SDP’s MPs including party leader, Davor Bernardic, vacated the Parliament.

The law on the LNG terminal was designed to regulate property and legal provisions for the terminal’s construction site. The project is meant to have two stages – first, the construction of a floating terminal, to be followed later on with the construction of an onshore terminal for liquefied natural gas.

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