Croatia is divided into 21 regional government units: 20 counties (županija) and the City of Zagreb that has a special status of performing competencies of both city and county, and has a significant role in performing state administrative tasks in its territory. The Law on the Areas of Counties, Towns and Municipalities in the Republic of Croatia establishes the administrative structure of the Republic of Croatia for the purposes of classifying those activities to be financed from the different budgets at particular levels. In their self-governmental remit, counties have tasks of regional importance, among which is also ‘the establishment and development of the network of educational, medical, social welfare, and cultural institutions’. However, it can be said that the regional authorities play a minor role in the governance structure of cultural policy in Croatia that is reflected in the financial input. Public cultural expenditure on the county level has remained rather low in the last decade, amounting to approximately 4-5% on a yearly level, according to the data by Ministry of Culture and Media (2021). As shown in this report, for 2021 there is a regional difference in public cultural expenditure within the counties, for example: Primorsko-goranska county (9.05%), Dubrovnik-Neretva county (7.14%), Brod-Posavina county (6.03%) and Osijek-Baranja county (5.21%), while in Koprivnica-Križevci county it is only 1.46% (see chapter 7.1).
While the previous laws offered a possibility for local government to introduce cultural councils on a local and regional level, the 2007 Law on Cultural Councils made this mandatory for all counties and cities with more than 30 000 inhabitants. The intention of the legislator was to contribute to the process of decentralisation, but the effects of this change have not been fully assessed. For example, according to the latest data available from the Ministry of Culture and Media (2021), gathered through the questionnaire of the units of the local and regional self-government, the percentage of the established cultural councils in the counties does not go over 18%. The data referred to the implementation of the old law, and has been used as an argumentation of the necessity of the changes in the Law. It is to be seen whether there will be changes with the implementation of the new Law on Cultural Councils and Financing of Public Needs in Culture from 2022, which brings instruments for follow up on the local cultural council implementation.
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