The Labour Party's parliamentary bench has sent a request to the Croatian Parliament's acting speaker Josip Leko, to conduct consultations among parliamentary groups on convening an extraordinary parliamentary session in order to prevent "an unlawful situation and threat to the legal order of the Republic of Croatia caused by the government's moves regarding state property management."
The Labour Party said in a press release on Monday that the government's moves "are in contravention of the existing legal regulations".
It recalls that it already sent an open letter to the government a week ago to warn Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic and the Croatian public about the unlawfulness of the government's intent to sell major state-owned companies, such as the Croatia Osiguranje insurer and the Hrvatska Postanska Bank (HPB) and to grant concessions for the country's motorways.
This opposition party recalls that the state property management envisages that it is necessary to adopt acts and plans in order to manage the state assets in the legal manner.
Such plans and acts including strategies have not been adopted yet. This means that "legal requirements for the sale of the state property and for concessions for the transport infrastructure have not been met," the party said.
"Unfortunately, the government has already made some moves in contravention of the said regulations, and therefore it is necessary to act now," the Labour Party said in the press release explaining the reasons for its insistence on an urgent meeting of the national parliament (Sabor) and consultations of parliamentary groups on this matter before the end of this month.
On 11 August, Labour Party leader Dragutin Lesar said he had sent the open letter to PM Milanovic asking that he immediately stop the privatisation of state-owned companies and the granting of motorways concessions, saying the government had not received parliament's consent for that and was thereby breaking the law on state property management.
Lesar told reporters it was true that the previous government had not proposed a state property management strategy so parliament did not adopt it, but that this did not authorise the incumbent government, which did not propose one either, to privatise, grant concessions for or sell any state property without parliament's authorisation.
He criticised Finance Minister Slavko Linic's statement that the government was not a good owner so everything should be sold.
Lesar said his party had stated a number of times it was against the sale of the HPB bank and the CO insurance company because of the bad experience with the sale of the oil company INA, and accused the government of not having a strategy for the future of the national economy, including property management. He said the motive for selling the HPB and the CO was to finance the budget deficit and not to make them stronger on the market.
Lesar accused the government of putting itself above parliament and of launching those processes when parliament was on a summer break to prevent political parties from discussing them.
Responding to a question from the press, he said then that if the government did not respond to his letter within eight days, he would ask the parliament speaker to call the heads of the parliamentary groups for consultations on an extraordinary parliament session during the summer recess.
