New law

Croatia: whistleblowers now face penalties

(Bild: Global Image Archive - stock.adobe.com)

A draft law that has been criticized both at home and abroad was approved by the Croatian parliament on Thursday. In future, whistleblowers who pass on information from judicial investigation files to the press could be punished.

Following protests from journalists' associations and opposition supporters, the passage in the original draft law that would have allowed journalists to be punished for publishing this information was removed. Critics say that their work would still be hindered by the threat of punishment for whistleblowers. The new regulation is popularly known as "Lex AP", after the initial letters in the name of the bourgeois Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic. His government introduced the new regulation in the Criminal Code.

Investigation files on top public prosecutor leaked
The opposition accuses Plenkovic of facilitating the cover-up of corrupt dealings by his party colleagues with the new regulations he has pushed through. Plenkovic has recently come under increasing criticism on the subject of the judiciary. At the beginning of February, parliament elected the controversial lawyer Ivan Turudic as chief public prosecutor at his instigation.

Turudic, until then a judge at the Supreme Criminal Court, is accused of having been in friendly contact with several people suspected of corruption. This was revealed by leaked information from investigation files.

Parliament also decided to dissolve it
The Croatian parliament also decided to dissolve itself on Thursday, paving the way for early parliamentary elections in the spring. The prime minister's decision to bring forward the parliamentary elections after all was attributed by the opposition to growing dissatisfaction among citizens with his government and the ruling HDZ party. The permanent ruling party is accused of corruption and cronyism, and the left-liberal opposition had been increasing the pressure for weeks with anti-government protests. Following a major demonstration in mid-February, new protests have been announced for March 23 in five Croatian cities.