Justice Minister Drazen Bosnjakovic said on Friday that a lot had been done over the past decade to fully digitise land registers, and announced that all land registers, including physical ones, would be stored in the central archive in Gospic to relieve courts.

Responding in parliament to criticism from Bridge MP Miro Bulj over the closure of municipal courts, Bosnjakovic said “we don’t have closed courts, we have constant services outside a court that are connected to the court and do the job.”

Bulj said the closure of municipal courts “which existed for centuries” halted big investments such as the Sinj Field irrigation agglomeration. “There are not enough people to clear 2,500 parcels through which the agglomeration passes, so HRK 240 million is laying dormant,” he said, adding that one had to wait up to ten years to register a parcel.

Bosnjakovic said there were 15 million cadastral particles in Croatia and four to five million property abstracts.

He said a lot had been done over the past dozen years and that land registers, which used to be kept manually, were fully digital today. The cadastre and land registers have been merged, a common information system has been established and everything can be done digitally, he added.

We have also established a central archive in Gospic where we will store all land registers, everything that is on paper, relieving courts of all those papers, said Bosnjakovic.

There is a bill to define land registration as an urgent procedure so that everything can be done within 15 days, he added.