After the Croatian Parliament's Gender Equality Committee rejected the Croatian Sovereignists' proposal to deratify the Istanbul Convention on Thursday, the party announced that it would start collecting signatures from MPs so that Parliament could discuss the proposal in a plenary session.

Sovereignist MP Marijan Pavlicek said they expect to collect signatures from all MPs who explicitly supported the ratification of the Istanbul Convention in the previous parliament.

“When the ruling coalition introduced the Istanbul Convention, it assured the public that it was introduced only to reduce the rate of violence against women, but according to all available statistics, we see today that such a reduction has not taken place,” the party said in a press release.

“Introduction of gender ideology”

What the Istanbul Convention has changed in Croatian society is the introduction of gender ideology in the Croatian education system, Pavlicek said. “The clearest example of this is the attempt to introduce so-called gender studies, which was only stopped for technical reasons, but next year these studies will already be part of the Croatian education system.”

The members of the Gender Equality Committee from the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the opposition Mozemo and Social Democratic Party (SDP) were against the proposal, while only Nikola Grmoja from the conservative Most party was in favour.

The deputy chairman of the committee from the right-wing Domovinski pokret (DP) party abstained from voting, according to the press release.