Croatia Football Federation 'Dodging' New Law

More than six months since the latest Law on Sports came into effect, Croatia's National Football Federation, the HNS, is continuing to dodge and defy the rules, experts say.

The new version of the law, passed in July, gave all sports clubs, both professional and amateur, six months from August to make the necessary adjustments, the deadline for which expired on Tuesday.

The altered law was a result of a strong social movement, coming mostly from fans of Hajduk Split, known as Torcida.

The changes are designed to make the way sport is financed more transparent and create a new model for organising national sporting associations.

The new law also says persons with final convictions for misdemeanours under the law on the prevention of incidents at sporting events cannot hold positions in clubs or associations for three years following conviction.

Even before the law was passed, the HNS opposed the law, however, and in January it sent the constitutional court a plea to revise it, claiming it breached the HNS's freedom of association.

The editor of the Croatian news portal Index, Dea Redzic, who has monitored football and the legal framework for sports in Croatia for years, told BIRN that "it was clear the HNS will do everything in its power to obstruct it [the law].

"Under the law, they should have organized assemblies at county level to elect a new leadership according to the propositions of the new law, and then organize an assembly at national level to elect a new national leadership," she said.

She explained that the existing organizational model was the current's leadership's "architecture of power", enabling it to retain power through its network of delegates.

In the meantime, she explained, the delegates to...