Professional paper
CITIZENSHIP AS A FUNDAMENTAL FEATURE OF STATE JURISDICTION IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA WITH REFERENCE TO THE WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES AND THE CITIZENS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
Matko Guštin
orcid.org/0000-0002-4577-0856
; student, Faculty of Law Osijek
Abstract
Citizenship represents a legal relationship between the state and the individual, from which
rights and obligations arise, and by modern regulation, citizenship appears as a factor in
shaping state sovereignty, which is influenced by the sociological and legal factors whose
complementarity creates a unique concept and that include numerous laws. The Croatian
Citizenship Act was passed in 1991, and like the majority of European citizenship acts, this
Act is also based on ius sanguinis as the fundamental form of acquiring Croatian citizenship.
By joining the European Union in 2013, Croatian citizens also became European citizens.
The concept of European citizenship (or citizenship) represents a special legal link that the
citizens of the Member States have towards the European Union as a supranational institution,
which is acquired and lost automatically. This legal link produces numerous rights, which,
inter alia, include freedom of movement, electoral law and others. Having lived in one state
for decades, Croatia and the Western Balkan countries share a number of not only similarities
but also differences in relation to the regulation of national legislation. Legislative differences
are manifested primarily with regard to the question of acquiring citizenship on the grounds
of naturalization, with certain states imposing stricter conditions for acquiring citizenship in
this way (Croatia is also part of this group). All this indicates that citizenship can influence
state sovereignty as a fundamental feature of the state. The aim of this paper is to present
the complexity of citizenship, primarily from the legal aspect, especially by analyzing the
Croatian legal framework and briefly pointing out a normative arrangement of neighboring
states, the so-called Western Balkan countries. It can be concluded that citizenship has both
a legal and a sociological aspect and that their mutual combination justifies the hypothesis
of state sovereignty.
Keywords
citizenship; state sovereignty; EU citizenship; ius sanguinis; naturalization
Hrčak ID:
222512
URI
Publication date:
8.7.2019.
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