Are Croatian Courts Prepared for the Interpretive Obligation?

Abstract

This article discusses compliance with the interpretive obligation by Croatian courts five years into Croatia’s membership in the EU. Our aim is to analyze whether Croatian courts have (and, if so, to what extent) accepted this obligation. We will first review the Croatian courts’ record of compliance with the interpretive obligation during the pre-accession period, and revisit some of the existing findings. In the second part, we turn to analysis of the Croatian courts’ record of compliance with the interpretive obligation following accession. Some of the key findings are: higher national courts have accepted that the EU interpretive obligation binds all national courts; lower national courts have fully embraced this obligation; the Constitutional Court struggles with adopting a clear position on the interpretive obligation. We conclude by observing whether EU membership has contributed to the transformation of legal culture and the relationship between different judicial instances in Croatia.