The Constitutional Court stated on Tuesday that it rejected the requests for declaring the Law on Constituencies and the Law on Trade, which stipulates that most Sundays in a year are non-working days, unconstitutional.

The Trade Act amendments regarding Sunday work were contested by small businesses, the Croatian Employers Association (HUP) and the liberal Fokus party. The amendments entered into force on 1 July 2023 and stipulate that shops can work 16 Sundays a year.

HUP said that restricting the work of businesses was contrary to its postulates and that bans did not stimulate market development nor have a positive impact on the labour market.

Fokus party said the law was discriminatory against and detrimental to small businesses, while benefiting retail chains. It recalled that in the past the Constitutional Court quashed the Sunday work ban on three occasions and that the reasons it stated then applied now as well.

The Court holds that the contested measure is proportional to the aim it is supposed to achieve, thus turning down the requests to declare it unconstitutional.

Law on constituencies

Motions for a constitutionality test of the new law on constituencies in parliamentary elections were submitted by opposition MPs and private persons. The Constitutional Court repealed the law in February 2023, warning that constituencies should reflect demographic trends so as not to jeopardise the constitutionality of parliamentary elections.

Parliament passed a new law on 28 September. Both the left and the right opposition said it was unconstitutional, claiming they were not included in its adoption and that it was not known who really drew it up.

The opposition said that in redrawing constituencies, the government should have scrapped the number of registered voters as a criterion because the Constitutional Court warned about a difference of 500,000 between the names in the voter register and the number of adult citizens per the last population census.

The Constitutional Court decides that in the drawing of the boundaries of the new electoral units “there was no obvious departure from societal, cultural, geographical and other common and traditional patterns in organising the everyday relations in the Croatian society.”