Zadar (IKA) – “It is not good that the Constitutional Court, by a majority vote, failed to recognize the violation of the elementary human rights of thousands and thousands of the citizens of this country. We are now expecting the Government together with the Parliament to undertake the necessary steps to initiate a new process in order to pass a better law about Sundays, as is the case in other Central European countries. This would remove some doubts about one of the fundamental institutions of this country,” pointed out the president of Croatia Caritas, Archbishop Ivan Prenda of Zadar, in a public statement issued on April 28 on the occasion of the decision by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia to rescind the amendments to the Sunday Operations of Stores Act.

In the statement, Archbishop Prenda said that although there has been recent media speculation that the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia would rescind the Sunday Operations of Stores Act, which was contributed to by two postponements of the announcement of this decision, nevertheless it was surprising. Therefore, the president of Croatian Caritas pointed out that the Church has drawn attention to some of the injustices in Croatian society that have threatened the rights of the person, in this case store employees, and these are the right to paid work and the right to rest on Sunday, which is guaranteed by the Constitution and several international contracts that Croatia has accepted. The archbishop explained that the rescinded law had been similar to that of other European countries regulating this area for the benefit of many threatened employees. He mentioned that after a type of referendum and more than 300,000 signatures from citizens, the Croatian Government had turned over the bill to the Croatian Parliament and it was passed by a majority of votes, and that the most recent public census confirmed that eighty percent of the citizens support a law prohibiting work on Sundays.

In the statement he recalled that in a document prepared at the directive of the Permanent Council of the Croatian Conference of Bishops, “Sunday for the Person,” it was emphasized that this law has vague wording and that it should be improved, as reiterated in a recent statement on the various reactions to that law among the public. However, according to the archbishop, this was nearly completely passed over in silence by the public media. In the statement, the president of Croatian Caritas commented that after a lawsuit by large commercial chains was brought to the Constitutional Court, an impression was created among the public that this law was passed by the Church and not by the supreme legislative authority of this country.
The head of Croatian Caritas, Prof. Mario Bebic, feels that this decision by the Constitutional Court has show how easy it is, even for the Constitutional Court, to forget the small and mistreated person who has become a victim of the commercial chains and financial centers of power.

On April 28, by an eight-to-five vote, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia rescinded the Amendment to the Sunday Operations of Stores Act of October 2003, according to which the operation of stores was prohibited on Sundays. The Constitutional Court ruled that the stipulations according to which the operations of stores on Sundays were significantly limited were unconstitutional because they encroached on the constitutionally guaranteed legal equality on the market, uniformity before the law and government rights.