Court Decrees More Rights for Serbs in Croatia’s Vukovar

The president of Croatian Constitutional Court, Miroslav Separovic, announced on Friday that the court had decided that the use of the Serbian language and Cyrillic script for official purposes in the Croatian town of Vukovar should be extended.

According to Constitutional Court decision, which was made on July 2, Vukovar city councillors from the Serb ethnic minority should have the same conditions as councillors of Croatian ethnicity.

In August 2015, Vukovar changed its town statute to say that the "collective rights of the Serb ethnic minority [for example bilingual signs on institutions, streets or squares] in the area of the town of Vukovar are to be ensured when the conditions are met".

Under the statute change, Serb councillors in Vukovar could get documents issued in the Serbian language and the Cyrillic script, but only if they made a written request.

Right-wing parties on the council voted for the changes in November 2013, proclaiming Vukovar a "city of special significance" exempt from Croatian minority rights legislation because of what it suffered when it was besieged and destroyed by Serbian forces in 1991.

The move came after months of protests sparked by the official introduction of bilingualism, as envisaged by Croatian law in places where a minority makes up more than 30 per cent of the population, as Vukovar's Serb community does.

However, Croatia's Committee on Human and National Minority Rights complained about the statute changes and requested an evaluation of their constitutionality.

This month's Constitutional Court decision overturned some of the statue changes, decreeing that Serbs - whether councillors or members of the public - must be able to get official documents in their own language and...