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Croatia presents new public holiday proposals

2020 Europe

At a cabinet meeting on Thursday October 10th 2019, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic presented a new calendar of public holidays and memorial days for Croatia.

Plenkovic said he is convinced that that the amendments would be more appropriate and would remove any doubts, confusion and vagueness.

Statehood Day would revert to May 30th and not June 25th as is the case now. May 30th is the day that the first multi-party democratic parliament was convened in 1990, and was the date for Statehood Day until 2001.

Explaining the change, Plenkovic said “That day is a sort of start of the adoption of a series of key acts that led us to independence, sovereignty and, finally, international recognition. It is 30 May in fact that is a sort of day of democracy, we can freely call that, the most referential and most relevant, and at the same time it was accepted very well among the Croatian people.

“The idea is that in 2020, on the 30th anniversary of that first 30 May, we put things in the right place. We believe that 30 May as Statehood Day will make Croatian citizens respect the state.”

The second change is that November 18th will become the Remembrance Day for Homeland War Victims and Remembrance Day for the Victims of Vukovar and Skabrnja.

To balance out the holidays, Independence Day on October 8th would change to a memorial day called Croatian Parliament Day, June 25th would become a new memorial day called Independence Day.

Date Current Proposal
Jan 1 New Year’s Day New Year’s Day
Jan 6 Three Kings Three Kings
Apr 13 Easter Monday Easter Monday
May 1 Labour Day Labour Day
May 30   Statehood Day
Jun 11 Corpus Christi Corpus Christi
Jun 22 Anti-Fascist Struggle Day Anti-Fascist Struggle Day
Jun 25 Statehood Day  
Aug 5 Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving
Aug 15 Assumption of Mary Assumption of Mary
Oct 8 Independence Day  
Nov 1 All Saints’ Day All Saints’ Day
Nov 18   Remembrance Day
Dec 25 Christmas Day Christmas Day
Dec 26 St. Stephen’s Day St. Stephen’s Day

Plenkovic highlighted that the number of public holidays would remain at 13 which, he said, is important from the economic aspect, because of the impact on the economy, GDP growth and everything that entails.

“We consider this distribution of public holidays and memorial days to regulate better and more precisely what occurred to us and the way that should stay in the future,” Plenkovic added.

DateMemorial Day
Jan 15Day of International Recognition
May 9Europe Day and Victory over Fascism Day
Jun 25Independence Day
Oct 8Croatian Parliament Day
Aug 23 European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of all Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes