Legal changes are now helping Croatian Serbs who couldn’t get citizenship of Croatia for years because of administrative failings, but a few are still having trouble obtaining approval, sparking claims of ethnic discrimination.
After amendments to Croatia’s Citizenship Law came into force last year, the problems of Croatian Serbs who had not been able to obtain Croatian papers since the collapse of federal Yugoslavia in 1991 have finally started to be resolved.
The legal amendments address the problems of around 5,000 people whose parents were Croatian Serbs but were living in Serbia when they were born, when both Serbia and Croatia were part of Yugoslavia.
The newborns were wrongly registered in the citizens’ register of the then Socialist Republic of Serbia, rather than the Socialist Republic of Croatia. When Croatia became independent from Yugoslavia, they had no rights to a Croatian passport or other essential documents entitling them to the benefits of citizenship such as education, healthcare, voting and employment rights.
One of them was Rade Lalic, who was born in 1982 to Croatian Serb parents who had Croatian citizenship but were living in Serbia at the time. At birth, he was mistakenly registered a citizen of the Socialist Republic of Serbia.
Lalic first applied for Croatian citizenship in 2007 but was rejected the following year. He filed a lawsuit against the Croatian administrative court, but it was dismissed in 2011. “I tried both in Serbia and Croatia, but everything was unsuccessful,” he said.
He finally managed to get Croatian citizenship last year. “Now after all this is over, I finally feel free,” he said.
The amendments to Croatian law came into force in January 2020 and gave people a two-year deadline to apply for citizenship. The deadline expires at the end of this year.
But experts told BIRN that the paperwork involved is too laborious and the whole process is still too slow, suggesting that the deadline should be extended or dropped altogether.
Some also claimed that the law discriminates against some applicants, mostly Serbs, as it is easier to obtain citizenship for descendants of ethnic Croat emigrants.
‘Unnecessary bureaucratisation’
Before the collapse of Yugoslavia, citizenship of one of the county’s six constituent republics – the Socialist Republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia – was not an important issue because everyone was a citizen of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
But after Croatia became independent, it did not accept people who were mistakenly registered as being citizens of another former Yugoslav republic as its own citizens, even if both their parents were registered as citizens of the Socialist Republic of Croatia.
However, the Law on the Citizenship of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which came into force in 1977, stated that a child automatically gets citizenship of the Socialist Republic of Croatia if both parents are citizens at the time of the birth.
Under Yugoslavia’s federal system, each constituent republic had its own register of citizens. But between January 8, 1977 and October 8, 1991, when Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, administrative errors were made in Serbia which meant that thousands of children of parents whose names were in the Croatian register of citizens were wrongly assigned to the Serbian register.
For decades after the break-up, neither Croatia nor Serbia showed much of a will to correct the mistakes.
Now the amended Croatian law accepts that “a person born in the period from January 8, 1977 to October 8, 1991 whose both parents at the time of birth had Croatian citizenship, but to whom another citizenship was assigned in the citizenship register” is eligible to be registered as a Croatian citizen.
Savo Manojlovic, president of the Belgrade-based Association for the Protection of Constitutionality and Legality, said that although the legal error has been resolved, the bureaucratic process is still too long.
“There are only two Croatian consulates in Serbia and the whole process has stalled. We have suggested that the Croatian Interior Ministry deals with the people directly in Croatia, since the consulates have to submit the applications to them already. It is an unnecessary bureaucratisation of the process,” Manojlovic told BIRN.
Zagreb-based law professor Aleksandar Marsavelski thinks that the deadline for applications at the end of 2021 is too soon.
“[It’s] inappropriate, given that these people are, in fact, Croatian citizens by birth, and according to both the old and new regulations, there was only a misinterpretation,” Marsavelski told BIRN.
He explained those who have been affected by the mistake are mostly the children of Croatian citizens who migrated to Serbia, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, for work or study.
He said that shortly after the law came into force, at the beginning of 2020, people were “queuing in front of the [Croatian] consulates in Serbia”, but the consulates were only open to deal with the issue for a few hours a day and received around six people daily.
After the introduction of measures intended to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Serbia, an appointment at the consulate needed to be scheduled in advance, which now involves some four months of waiting to be seen.
Marsavelski said he believes that the deadline will be extended by Croatian authorities for two more years, but argued that it would be better to completely abolish the time limit.
Dragana Jeckov, an MP from the Independent Democratic Serb Party, which represents Serbs in Croatia, raised the issue in the Croatian parliament in April, asking Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic to prolong the deadline, given the extraordinary circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic and powerful earthquakes that have hit Croatia.
Bozinovic however insisted that despite the pandemic, “the process did not stop at any point”. He said that around 200 applications were filed by people who are claiming citizenship because both of their parents have Croatian citizenship, and that “just over 100 have been resolved”.
The Croatian Interior Ministry did not respond to BIRN query about the number of applicants from Serbia and about how many have obtained citizenship since the law came into force.
According to the Humanitarian Center for Integration and Tolerance, which is a partner of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in legal protection and assistance to refugees, and is assisting Croatian Serbs, more than 500 have been granted citizenship since the law changed.
Ethnic Croats vs. children of Croatian citizens
According to Croatia’s Citizenship Law, a person born abroad, who has at least one parent who is a Croatian citizen, can acquire Croatian citizenship, but it must be registered at a consular office abroad or at the registry office in Croatia by the age of 21.
If for some reason, the person did not register by the age of 21, he or she now has until the end of 2021 to submit a request to be registered.
However, the procedure is complicated by the fact that applicants have to submit proof that they do not have criminal convictions, pose a security risk, or owe money to the state.
Spiro Lazinica from the Humanitarian Centre for Integration and Tolerance said that a few Croatian Serbs are still having problems getting citizenship.
Lazinica said there have been six cases of people who have been told they do not have the right to citizenship even though the legislative changes should allow them to obtain it. He also claimed that Croatia is prioritising ethnic Croats over Croatian Serbs for citizenship.
“Now they are again trying to interpret the law restrictively, because many non-Croats – that is, Serbs – are applying for citizenship, and they do not want that,” he said.
He said that with his legal advice, the applicants will complain to Croatia’s Administrative Court if the Interior Ministry does not respond positively to their appeal.
The most recent legal amendments have scrapped old restrictions that stipulated that only those whose parents or grandparents have Croatian citizenship can apply. They have also removed the requirements for applicants to speak Croatian, understand the Latin script and have knowledge of Croatia’s culture and “social structure”.
The law now states that a “member of the Croatian people” who does not reside in Croatia can acquire Croatian citizenship if he or she respects Croatia’s legal system, has paid all the necessary taxes and fees, and has no criminal convictions.
The law also says that a Croatian emigrant and his or her descendants can acquire Croatian citizenship by naturalisation.
It defines an emigrant as “a person who emigrated from the Republic of Croatia before October 1991 with the intention of living permanently abroad”.
But Marsavelski noted that if someone migrated during Yugoslav times to another Yugoslav republic, he or she is not considered an emigrant under the law.
“And that’s also discrimination,” he said, arguing that there should be no distinction between people who emigrated to another country outside Yugoslavia while it still existed and those who moved to Serbia or other Yugoslav republics which later became separate countries.
Over more than a century, large numbers of ethnic Croats have emigrated to North or South America, Australasia or Western Europe, and many of their descendants are eligible to apply for citizenship.
“People are being discriminated against because they chose the countries of the former Yugoslavia to relocate to, and not Germany, Canada or Australia,” Marsavelski said.