Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities in the Republic of Croatia

Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities in the Republic of Croatia Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina
Ratified	23 December 2002

The Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities in the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina^[1]) is constitutional law which defines rights of national minorities in Croatia. It is one of in total three Constitutional Acts in the Croatian legal system, with the other two being the Constitutional Act on Implementation of the Constitution of Croatia and the Constitutional Act on the Constitutional Court of Croatia. In its current form, the Act entered into force on 23 December 2002.^[2] Its earlier version, under the title Constitutional Act on National and Ethnic Communities or Minorities was passed in December 1991 as a precondition of the international community for the recognition of Croatian independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Act is hierarchically under the Constitution of Croatia and must comply with it, but above ordinary state laws and decisions, and above statutes and decisions of lower levels of government, which all must be in accordance with this law. Additionally, two special laws were created to define rights regarding education in minority languages and specific rights on the usage of minority languages in public life (Law on Use of Languages and Scripts of National Minorities and The Law on Education in language and script of national minorities).^[3] Additionally, the Constitution of Croatia itself has articles directly relating to the protection of national minorities, and lists traditional minorities in Croatia.