--- ADDITIONAL NOTE (March 2002):   Recently  some members of SUS  and some other tenants  are telling me,  that  they are not sure  how much to trust  any of the tenants' organizations in Croatia.  (I am not a memeber of any such organizations).  Allegedly, they suspect  that the Croatian Union of Tenants  is trying to get control over SUS and others,  in order to impose solutions  that would be  in the interest of owners  and harmful to tenants.  Many Croatian tenants are not members of any tenants' unions,  and they want to cheaply buy their flats  (while the owners should get a compensation)  as had been  proposed in Sabor (= Parliament)  by the now-ruling SDP party (and others)  in 1998 and 1999. -   See the site "START": 

     https://soric-b.tripod.com/start/

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In 1998. the Constitutional Court of Croatia made a decision (published in the official paper "Narodne novine" No. 48/1998), which is considered by many Croatian citizens (tenants and others) to be quite wrong and illogical, and which is moreover contradictory to an earlier decision made by the same Court (Narodne novine No. 11/1997 p. 681). Many tenants, some lawyers, and others, do not believe that such a scandalous decision could really have been written by the Judges of the Constitutional Court or any serious professionals, unless they had been pressured by politicians.

By the above-mentioned decision of 1998 the Court did not abolish the obvious discrimination against the tenants (i.e. tenantship-right holders) in the so-called PRIVATE flats. The Court admitted (on page 999) that these tenantship-right holders had had EQUAL RIGHTS as other tenants (in the "public-property flats" etc.), but said that they had been in a "different" legal position because of the very fact that their tenantship right had existed on the privately OWNED flats. The Court also said that Article 48, Paragraph 1, of the Croatian Constitution guaranteed the right of ownership.

However, in the 1997-Decision the same Court said that all the "former tenantship-rigth holders had acquired these rights on the ground of the same legal regulations and there existed ONLY ONE TYPE of the tenantship rights INDEPENDENTLY of who had been the tenantship-right giver" (i.e. OWNER of a flat); and the Court went on to say that the State MUST NOT make differences between the tenantship-right holders which make it impossible or difficult FOR SOME OF THEM to (cheaply) buy the flats (in which they lived).
So, evidently, the Court meant (in 1997) that all the tenantship-right holders had been in equal positions and, for this reason, they must be treated equally.
Moreover, the Constitutional Court allowed certain persons, who lived in other-people's flats (even without tenantship rights!), to cheaply buy these flats, on the ground of Article 48 of the Law on Renting Flats, taking into account that the owners had cheaply bought other flats. The Court explained this as an implementation of social justice. This raises the question: If those, who LIVE (even without tenantship rights) in the flats privately-owned by other people, get the right to cheaply buy these flats, why the same right is not given to those who not only live but also have the TENANTSHIP RIGHTS in such flats?

The above-mentioned Article 48, Paragraph 1, of the Croatian Constitution reads: "The right of ownership is guaranteed". - Because the right of ownership can belong to various natural or legal persons, the property can either be owned privately, or it can be owned by the State, etc.; and any such ownership (regardless of who is the owner) is guaranteed by Article 48, Para 1, of the Constitution. Hence, of course, all the tenants, who have equal rights and obligations in various flats (either owned by individuals, or by the State, etc.), are in equal positions.

 

[ Another question might be this: Should the State -  having cheaply sold the public-property flats  -  seize  from the nominal  owners  the  small  remainders  of  their ownership rights upon the  private flats (occupied by  tenantship-right holders)  in  order  that  these flats  may  likewise  be cheaply  bought by  the tenants?   As a matter of fact,  the State has already seized even the whole ownership rights by Article 48 of the Law on Renting Flats (1996).  Those,  who might find this to be unjustified,  likewise  cannot  justify  the  seizure of  the  permanent,  forever-inheritable  tenantship rights  that  had  been  acquired  legally  and,  in some cases,  by the free will of original owners.  So,  if the owners should not be forced to sell the flats,  the tenants should likewise not  be deprived of their  honestly-acquired rights,  as follows  from  Resolution 1096 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe].

By the Law on Housing Relations (LHR) the tenants (i.e. tenantship-right holders) in the so-called private flats were made EQUAL to the tenants in the public-property flats. Namely, by Article 3, Paragraph 1, of LHR (1974) a tenantship right in a public-property flat was acquired by means of a "contract on using the flat"; and by Para 2 of the same Article 3, the SAME RIGHT also belonged to a citizen who had acquired the tenantship right in a private flat on the ground of previous legal regulations.

A tenant, by signing the CONTRACT to use the flat (on the ground of the LHR), might have obligated himself to move to another practically-EQUAL flat, if it were offered by the owner, i.e. a flat "which does not worsen any of the circumstances of dwelling, considering especially the size of the flat, the number of rooms, the comfort and the location of the flat" (etc.; LHR 1974). However, such contractual rights and obligations have expired (lost validity through the statute of limitations). - That, of course, cannot justify either the discrimination or the great damage inflicted upon the tenants in private flats; and also, that made no difference in the position of tenants. On the contrary, all the tenantship-right holders were in practically-equal positions, and that is especially evident if the economic value (i.e. property value) of the tenantship right is considered.
This value, of any tenantship right, was greater than 90% (greater than ninety percent) of the market value of the (empty) flat, which is obvious from the fact, that, during SFRJ (former Yugoslavia), the market price of private flats, occupied by tenantship-right holders, was less than 10% of the market value of empty flats; and later, in the Republic of Croatia, the public-property flats have likewise been sold to tenants for less than 10% of the market value. However, while the latter tenants, having cheaply bought the public-property flats, as well as the nationalized (and other) flats, will keep forever the full value of their tenantship rights, the tenants in private flats are deprived (without compensation) of their tenantship-right value! This is an obvious, indubitable, most brutal and most ruthless discrimination, deprivation and damage.

Zeljka Antunovic, speaking in Sabor on behalf of SDP (on January 29, 1999), said that the tenantship-right holders in private flats "have been discriminated against, by being denied the right to privatization of flats on which they had quite equal tenantship rights as many others, who were granted the opportunity to buy their flats on very favourable terms".

It should also be mentioned, that the term "discrimination" is not restricted to different treatment of persons who had previously been in quite-equal positions. There is also discrimination, if the differently-treated persons had been in ANALOGOUS or SIMILAR positions. The European Court of Human Rights stated in the Lithgow case that persons who are placed in ANALOGOUS situations must not be treated differently. In the Fredin case, the Court said that for a claim to succeed, it has to be 'established, inter alia, that the situation of the alleged victim can be considered SIMILAR to that of persons who have been better treated '. - (Capitals by B.S.) - (See: Francis G. Jacobs & Robin C. A. White: "The European Convention on Human Rights", 2nd ed., Clarendon Press - Oxford, 1996, p. 284. etc.).

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