Professional paper
Position of the county in the Croatian legal system
Teodor Antić
; Primorsko-goranska County Headquarters
Abstract
The county as a territorial and an administrative unit has a twofold position in the legal system of the Republic of Croatia: on one hand it makes an unit of local self- government, and on the other it makes apart of the state administration. Each of those two aspects of a county has its own jurisdiction, organisation, sources and ways of financing and certain other particularities. The competences from the selfgoverning authority of a county are performed by the assembly (as a representative body), the head council (as an executive body) and the administrative departments (as direct enforcers). Those competences are financed from the county budget. The competences of the state administration in the county areperformed by the county offices, and those are financed from the state budget. On the head of the county is a prefect, who is in the same time a representative of the state authority on the territory of a county as well as a bearer of the executive authority within its selfgoverning jurisdiction.
Because of the mentioned double role of a county, within itself certain problems and tensions arise, in particular in relations between its selfgoverning and the state parts. The county selfgoverning structure in favor of its supremacy emphasises its legitimacy established on direct or indirect elections within the county itself, its beter understanding of the locai circumstances and needs and its immediate responsibility to the representative body and trough it to the electorate. The county state administration, on the other hand, points out its beter insight into wider interests of the whole social community, its oversight role and the legal authority, as well as the duty of coordination and equalization of the position of the local units.
In order to prevail over this problem there should be in the legal system of the Republic of Croatia adopted an array of principles, among which the following are of a particular significance:
- that the local selfgovernment makes a supplement to the state administration but not only its lowest level.
- that the county state offices as well as the county head council and the selfmanaging departments have in essence the same task - to perform a public service, each within its own authority to the purpose of executing tasks of a general interest.
- that in order to ensure those tasks the model of confrontation of the state administration to the local selfgovernment should be replaced by the model of cooperation of those two segments of the administration.
Keywords
county; local Selfgovernment; state administration
Hrčak ID:
197717
URI
Publication date:
8.6.1999.
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