Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Thursday presented amendments to the law on constituencies, saying they bring just a minor modification to the current map of constituencies and that only 22% of voters will end up in another constituency.

The bill of amendments will be sent to parliament before its summer recess so that a second reading can be held in the first two weeks of September and the amended law enter into force on 1 October. The current law, as decided by the Constitutional Court, goes out of force at the end of September.

Regarding the Court’s decision of 7 February, Plenkovic said the amendments should ensure that each vote carries equal weight, that the constituencies follow the boundaries of counties, municipalities ans towns/cities as much as possible, and that the departure in number of voters per constituency does not exceed 5%.

“In the political sense, as a government, we wanted to retain the current model of ten constituencies in Croatia with 14 deputies elected in each,” he said, adding that “the Constitutional Court gave us the possibility to… practically modify the existing system and achieve… the equal treatment of both voters and deputies elected to parliament.”

As much as 78% of voters will remain in their current constituency, Plenkovic said.

Under the amendments, the biggest departure from the average number of voters per constituency (364,664) will be in the tenth constituency, of 2.2%, while the other margins will be within 2.20%, he added.

“Extremely low departures which put the new architecture of the constituencies fully within the legal context of what is currently prescribed, that is within 5%,” he said, adding that “this is closest to having practically the same number of voters per constituency which is, naturally, impossible.”