Vukovar mayor Ivan Penava said on Sunday he talked with Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic about a Constitutional Court decision on the use of the languages and scripts of ethnic minorities in the town, and that Plenkovic told him it was necessary to keep the peace and stability and to try to resolve the issue through dialogue.

Speaking on Nova TV commercial broadcaster, Penava said Plenkovic was “open-minded and fully understanding of the situation” and that “he is fully aware of the gravity of the problem that we, and consequently the government, encounter in the town every day.”

Penava said everyone reasonable, including the government, would adhere to the letter of the law and justice but must also acknowledge that, in line with the constitution, human life and dignity were much more important than other things.

The constitutional law on minorities’ rights, passed in 2002, stipulates that equal use of minority language and script is to be implemented in those towns and municipalities where the minority comprises at least a third of the population in the town. According to the 2011 census, the Serb minority in Vukovar stands at about 34 percent of the town population.

Bilingual signs were first put on state institution buildings in Vukovar in 2013, while the government was led by the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP), sparking a series of protests during which some of the signs were smashed, sprayed over or forcibly taken down. The issue remained in the spotlight until late 2015, when the SDP lost the parliamentary election to the centre-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). The signs that remain in the town are either in Croatian, or with the cyrillic script taped over.

Mayor Penava, member of the HDZ, said on Sunday that Vukovar was not ready for such steps to be taken, and that resolving crimes committed in Vukovar during the 1991-95 war must be first priority, “and then (we can) build, on clean foundations, a better society and a state in which there will be room for all the rights for either ethnic minorities or anyone else living in this country.”

Meanwhile, Constitutional Court chair, Miroslav Separovic, told N1 on Sunday that he expected the local authorities in Vukovar to implement the court decision.

He said that minorities can exercise their right to the use of their mother-tongue and script in public communication and to be provided documents and licences in their mother tongue.

“Under the law on the use of languages and scripts of ethnic minorities, it is within the authority of local government to decide on gradual implementation of those rights,” Separovic said, adding he understood the emotionally charged statements by the mayor and the council, but that the court’s ruling must be honoured.