The European Commission praised Andrej Plenković's government on the same day that he told the Ombudswoman, an independent institution for the protection and promotion of human rights and freedoms, that she had nothing to criticize him for for not reacting to the widespread use of the fascist salute last weekend in Zagreb. Moreover, he said that he had appointed her to this position, thereby telling this independent institution to understand that it is still dependent - on him. On the same day, Europe says that Croatia is making great progress when it comes to protecting the rule of law.
On Tuesday, at the plenary session in Strasbourg, the Commission presented the 2025 Rule of Law Reports on member states. Gong also contributed to the preparation of this year's report on the rule of law in Croatia, but the trend continues that civil society organizations are increasingly less heard in the preparation of the report, and the report is almost exclusively based on information provided by state bodies about their own work. This represents a bad practice, and in the six years since the existence of this important report, its meaning has been completely undermined. We find their insight that "the government is raising awareness about the harmfulness of corruption" particularly problematic in the year in which a minister of that same government was accused of corruption worth millions.
The Rule of Law Report consists of four chapters: the judicial system, the framework for combating corruption, media pluralism and freedom of the media, and other institutional issues related to the system of checks and balances. In addition to the responses of state institutions about their own work, which hardly represent an objective assessment, the only institution whose insights are systematically included in the report is the OECD, which is very critical of progress in the aforementioned chapters, while the Commission, it seems, is looking at the state of rule of law in Croatia through rose-colored glasses again this year.
Thus, the Commission also sees "significant progress" in the implementation of the recommendations from previous reports to improve the implementation of the Ombudswoman's recommendations and access to information. The moment in which this report praises the attitude of state institutions towards the Ombudswoman shows more than the authors would certainly like. While the Prime Minister humiliates this institution and talks about how the current Ombudswoman is "there thanks to him", the Commission talks about how its recommendations are being successfully implemented. Let us recall that the Ombudswoman presented the report for 2022 in Parliament only last month. The government did not respond to the reports from 2023 and 2024, which is necessary for them to go through the parliamentary procedure. When asked by journalists why they did not respond to the Ombudswoman's report from 2023, given that it is now 2025, the Prime Minister replied: "Is that a topic? Who cares?". At the same time, the Ombudswoman reiterates that "the attitude of the Parliament and the Government towards reports on citizens' rights is unacceptable". The Commission did not consider it important to include the neglect of the Constitutionally designated human rights defender in the report, mentioning only statistical indicators of the implementation of her recommendations, which have indeed improved in the observed period. It is as if no one spoke to the Ombudswoman's representatives when drafting the report on the rule of law in Croatia.
The Commission also concludes that “the authorities are developing a track record of investigations, prosecutions and convictions of corruption, including in high-level cases”. While the report mentions good cooperation between PNUSKOK and USKOK (the bodies for investigating and prosecuting corruption), when it comes to cooperation between the DORH and the EPPO, they mention that cooperation with the EPPO “faced challenges due to a conflict of competence between national prosecutors nd the EPPO in one prominent case”, avoiding explicitly mentioning the fact that it concerns the former Minister of Health, Vili Beroš, who was part of the Government at the time of his arrest, and calling it “a corruption case” in other places.
The issue of jurisdiction over cases of misuse of European funds, that is, the incompatibility of Croatian legislation with the Regulation on the European Public Prosecutor Office (EPPO), is a topic of exceptional importance and is being considered by the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions at the suggestion of Gong. Namely, Croatian legislation has included the fact that the Attorney General has the exclusive authority to decide on conflicts of competence between the State Attorney's Office (DORH) and the EPPO, although the Regulation states that this authority should belong to the courts, which in the event of doubts about jurisdiction can turn to the European Court of Justice, which the Attorney General cannot do. The fact that the DORH is a party to a conflict of competence with the EPPO, which is also the one adjudicating on the matter, calls into question the legal certainty and implementation of the Regulation in Croatia. The Commission did not consider it appropriate to highlight this issue and the incompatibility with European legislation, although Gong's request to the Committee was forwarded to the European Commission for further action.
Although the Commission for the Resolution of Conflicts of Interest was left without a president who publicly spoke out and indicated that her work in the committee was obsructed, the report only briefly mentions her departure, without going into the seriousness of the allegations and the circumstances under which the committee was left without a leading person. Although her resignation, with which she intended to warn about the capture of the institution, was problematized for days in the media, and by the opposition and civil society, the Commission's report ignores this fact. It highlights the technical limitations of the asset verification system as crucial to the work of the Commission, a problem known for years and which has still not been adequately resolved.
When it comes to the new Lobbying Act, the report is somewhat more objective, and indicates that the law is being implemented, but the public has no insight into the meetings of lobbyists and officials, which Gong has repeatedly warned about. Lobbyists only need to register and report once a year on who they lobbied and on what topic, while the lobbied persons have no obligations under this Act. This information is not stored in the lobbyist register. International guidelines on lobbying recommend making publicly available, timely, comprehensive and detailed information on all lobbying activities. Although the Commission claims that this information will be available to the media, for example, through the Right to Access Information Act, it is not clear whether this will allow for insight into all meetings and the content of all meetings, or whether this part will also be limited or simply unenforceable in practice. The fact that the public does not know which lobbyists, officials, and representatives meet significantly limits the transparency of representation, something the OECD also warns about. The goal of the Lobbying Act was to make lobbying transparent. This law has not fulfilled its purpose.
It was also pointed out that the share of laws passed under the urgent procedure has increased, and more than a third of laws (34%) were adopted in the shortened procedure, despite the fact that this mechanism should only be used in exceptionally justified and urgent situations. However, when it comes to the Government and the Croatian Parliament, practice shows the opposite: there is rarely any real urgency, but laws are nevertheless declared urgent to avoid debate and hide key shortcomings. Such practice creates the impression that Croatia under Plenković’s leadership continues to act as if it is in a permanent state of emergency.
“The Government is raising awareness about the harmfulness of corruption and the importance of whistleblower legislation”
This is another conclusion that has little to do with reality. The Ombudswoman is also mentioned here, with the report stating that she notes that "the competent authorities often take a long time to follow-up on reports and need to be reminded”, which again calls into question the previous conclusion that significant progress has been made in the implementation of her recommendations. The Commission concludes that the Government is pointing out the harmfulness of corruption by conducting an information and educational campaign for the public, while ignoring dozens of ministers who left this and previous Plenković governments precisely because of suspicions of corruption. In fact, in the next paragraph, the Commission writes about the Beroš case, the fact that one member of the Government is awaiting indictment for corrupt acts in public procurement procedures. The report states that "measures have been taken against corruption in public procurement, an area in which there is still a high risk of corruption”. However, they continue that the level of independence of the State Commission for the Control of Public Procurement Procedures is assessed by 27% of companies as very or fairly good, and that no additional members of the State Commission have been appointed. It seems that they base their conclusion that measures have been taken against corruption in public procurement on a kind of exclusive news with which the Croatian public is not familiar. Namely, the report states that “the Ministry of Health conducted a review of all extraordinary public procurement procedures in healthcare and reported that there were no significant discoveries”. Considering the press articles from June 30 of this year that write about the expectation of the results of the state audit, especially after the fact that other scandals in the Croatian healthcare system have emerged in the meantime, it is not clear whether this is an oversight, or whether the Ministry of Health conducted the audit that the new minister announced when she took office in November 2024, and made it available to the Commission, but not to the public.
In the section on media pluralism and media freedom, if we were to read the titles of the paragraphs, we would say that the situation in the media in Croatia is excellent. The main focus is on Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT), the national public broadcaster, but when we look a little deeper, it seems that even the Commission is not managing to completely turn a blind eye to the narrowing of media freedom. Thus, the report states that “according to the Media Pluralism Monitoring Report for 2025, indicators of the independence of public media are at the high-risk end of the scale, and the situation regarding media freedom and pluralism on HRT is still worrying”.
They stress that “no progress has yet been made in strengthening the legal framework and oversight mechanisms to ensure a fair and transparent distribution of state advertising funds at national, regional and local levels”. Gong has been highlighting this issue for years, and published research on the subject in 2022. They point out that some agreements between local authorities and media organisations do not make it clear what is promotional and what is journalistic content, which threatens editorial independence. They also point to stakeholders’ concerns about Lex AP, a new criminal offence of unauthorised disclosure of information about criminal investigations, due to how it could affect journalists’ sources. They also acknowledge that issues related to the safety of journalists remain, and conclude that they are being addressed.
In the section of the rule of law report dealing with civil society, we could copy the text from our review of last year’s report, given that the Commission itself seems to have copied its insights from last year almost word for word. Thus, it reiterates that the civic space in Croatia is considered to be narrowed, that the transition to a multi-year model of financing civil society organizations has continued, and the National Plan for Creating an Enabling Environment for the Development of Civil Society is still in preparation. We draw attention to the fact that the plan for the period 2021-2027 has been in preparation since 2021, but has not been adopted so far. The fact that it has not existed for almost a decade, since 2016, has also been overlooked, but the Commission sees nothing controversial in this fact, given that its adoption was not included in the recommendations.
