The recently dissolved 10th Parliament has passed more than a third of the laws by fast-track procedure, a practice that should only be resorted to in exceptional cases, according to GONG NGO, which concludes that the Andrej Plenkovic government is sending the message that "we are living in a state of emergency".

“The frequent adoption of laws in fast-track procedures devalues democratic procedures and narrows the space for public debate on important social issues,” says a study written by Sergej Zupanic, which GONG presented on Tuesday.

The last parliament passed 500 laws at its 21 sessions, 318 of which were passed in the regular procedure and 182 in the fast-track procedure, which corresponds to a share of 36%.

GONG notes that the parliament’s rules of procedure explicitly state that a law can be passed “exceptionally” under the fast-track procedure “if there are specific, justified reasons”. According to the Standing Orders, one such reason is the harmonisation of Croatian laws with EU law, but only if these laws do not need to be discussed in the context of alignment with the Constitution or the Croatian legal system.

This was the case for an even higher proportion of laws that were fast-tracked during the terms of office of the governments of Ivo Sanader, Jadranka Kosor and Zoran Milanovic. However, during the terms of office of these parliaments, Croatia was in the process of joining the EU and had to transpose a large number of EU laws into national law, according to GONG.

Most of the laws were fast-tracked because of the euro changeover

The study shows that most of the laws passed by the 10th Parliament in the fast-track procedure were adopted in the 12th session, which began on 15 September 2022.

The legislative changes mainly concerned the changeover of the kuna to the euro, but some of them went beyond the currency changeover, such as the change of criminal liability to liability for misdemeanours or cases where the fast-track procedure was justified by the need to pass other laws.

In the case of the Parliamentary Election Constituency Act, the ruling majority opted for the fast-track procedure after it emerged that the Constituency Act was not published in the Official Gazette until 4 October 2023, although it stated 1 October as the date of entry into force.

“This drew criticism that the government had waited until the last moment to pass the law,” the study says.

Fast-track procedure contributes to the government’s dominance over the legislature

The Local Elections Act was amended twice in a fast-track procedure, at the 4th and 7th sessions, with votes in December 2020 and April 2021, with the rationale being the same in both cases – the approach of the local elections in May 2021, the study says.

“The urgency of the process to amend the Primary and Secondary School Education Act (voted on 15 December 2023) was justified by the need to meet the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) deadlines by the end of the year. The NRRP was adopted two and a half years earlier, in July 2021,” the study states.

According to Zupanic, the excessive use of the fast-track procedure devalues democratic procedures and restricts the space for public debate on important social issues. He points out that, for example, laws that are passed in the German Bundestag using the fast-track procedure require a two-thirds majority, meaning that a reading is only skipped in exceptional cases.

In parliament, only a simple majority is required for a bill introduced by the government under the fast-track procedure, says Zupanic, pointing out that according to a report by the UK Parliament, the passing of laws under the fast-track procedure contributes to the government’s dominance over the legislature.