News
City to City Dialogue: Municipal Finances and Urban Planning & Land Management, Dubrovnik June 19-21 2013
The upcoming C2C dialogue organized by the World Bank – Austria Urban Partnership Program will give the opportunity to participating municipalities to share findings from the completed Municipal Finances Self-Assessment (MFSA) and progress on the Urban/Land Use Planning Self-Assessment (UPSA). The workshop will bring together central and local government representatives, heads of financial departments, urban planners, as well as civil society, to continue to engage in discussion about the linkages between municipal finances and urban planning. There will be opportunity to share the MFSA findings from the Improvement Action Plans, as well as discuss the way towards benchmarking and institutionalization of rigorous diagnosis to improve their municipal management practices in a transparent manner. The workshop will also culminate the Municipal Finance Review (MFR) process, and offer technical guidance to municipal staff on updating and maintenance of the municipal finance databases.
Read more | Added 17.06.2013
Preliminary results of the municipal elections held on May 19th and June 2nd 2013
At the local elections held on May 19 and June 2nd 2013 Croatian citizens elected the representative bodies of local (regional) governments (members of municipal and city councils and county councils and the Zagreb City Assembly), as well as mayors, prefects and their deputies together with representatives of the national minorities. At 6.568 polling stations across the Croatian for the sixth time citizens were electing 20 county prefects, 128 city mayors and 428 municipal mayors and their deputies. They also had to choose 8.256 local councilors – all in all there was 56.558 candidates which is ten thousand more than 2009. The average candidate is a man of 43 years, and the biggest competition was for city councilors - 19 candidates in the race for one seat. More than 14 million ballots was printed. According to preliminary results of the Central Election Commission 46,97% of voters casted their ballot, while 53,03% did not use the right to vote during first round. Unofficial election results at the municipal level can be found in the attached pdf format.
Read more | Added 24.05.2013
Students from VERN College in the Association of the Municipalities
Bachelor students of journalism at VERN College together with their professor and longtime journalist Zlatko Herljević visited the Association of Municipalities on 24 May . The aim of the visit was to get acquainted with the functioning of local government in Croatia. Students were interested in territorial organization, local finances and of mayor's mandates, but most of the introductory words of executive director Mladen Ivanović, as well as a great number of questions , were dedicated to the first round of local elections that happened on 19 May.
Read more | Added 24.05.2013
Local elections scheduled
Croatian Government announced local elections for members of representative bodies of local (regional) governments, the municipal mayors and prefects and their deputies, and the deputies for national minorities on 18 April 2013. Sixth local elections in Croatia will be held on Sunday 19th May 2013, and the deadline for submitting the lists of proposed candidates for the representative bodies and nominations for the election of executive officials and their deputies is 2nd May 2013.
Read more | Added 24.04.2013
Pershak elected for President, Bukvic Vice President of NALAS
Annual General Assembly of the Network of Associations of Local Authorities of South-East Europe – NALAS was held in Skopje (Macedonia) on 19 and 20th April 2013 and the Mayor of the Municipality of Lukac and President of the Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Croatia Djuro Bukvic was elected as Vice President of NALAS.
In accordance with the rotation system that was adopted at this Assembly, former President of NALAS, Mayor of the Turkish City of Bursa Ozgen Keskin was replaced by Anton Pershak, the Mayor of the Slovenian City of Trzin. NALAS reports for 2012., work plan and budget for the 2013 were adopted at the meeting. Representatives of fifteen organizations from twelve countries of South Eastern Europe elected also some new governing NALAS bodies for a one-year period. In this way Croatia entered the year preceding the Croatian presidency of NALAS, an important organization that is committed to a higher degree of decentralization in the countries of Southeast Europe and to a stronger role of local authorities in designing of public policies that affect the daily lives of citizens.