The Constitutional Court has ruled that President Zoran Milanovic cannot be Prime Minister-designate or Prime Minister because he took part in the election campaign without resigning as President.

At a press conference on Friday, the President of the Constitutional Court Miroslav Separovic said that Milanovic, unlike the Social Democratic Party (SDP), had violated the Constitutional Court’s warning of 18 March by explicitly repeating that he had entered the election campaign as the next prime minister.

With such statements and behaviour, Milanovic put himself in the position of a participant in the parliamentary election, which he cannot be according to the Constitution as long as he is the President of the Republic, the court said, adding that the constitutional position of the President of the Republic is incompatible with the position of a participant in the elections to the Croatian Parliament.

The Constitutional Court pointed out that electoral processes are always the most important test of commitment to genuine political democracy as enshrined in the Constitution. Throughout the entire election campaign, Milanovic had acted unconstitutionally and thus called into question the rule of law and the democratic multi-party system as the highest values of the constitution, it added.

The decision was adopted by nine votes to three. One judge was absent.