EC confident Croatia will respect minority rights

EC confident Croatia will respect minority rights

"The Commission remains confident that the Croatian authorities will comply with their national and international commitments, in particular, among others, the application of the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as well as of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages by its Member States, which Croatia has ratified,” said EC spokesperson Christian Wigand.

This is how the EU executive body commented for the Croatian news agency Hina on the amendments to the Vukovar city statute, Tanjug said.

The changes mean that signs on public buildings will no longer be written in both Croatian and Serbian, that is, in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.

“Respect for linguistic and cultural diversity is one of the cornerstones of the European Union enshrined in Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union. However, national language policies, including bilingual public signs, are not regulated by EU law and remain within the jurisdiction of each Member State,” Wigand said.

He underlined that any discrimination based on ethnic origin is explicitly prohibited in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)-dominated Vukovar City Council adopted on August 17 the amendments to the city statute. The decision, however, runs contrary to the Croatian Constitution which gives an ethnic minority the right to use of own language and alphabet if their number is greater than 30 percent of a local population - as is the case with Serbs in Vukovar.

The decision was criticized by Serbs in Croatia and by Serbian authorities, who sent a protest note to Croatia and announced they would turn to European and international institutions.