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Zagreb - Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković said on Monday that the parliamentary Committee on the Constitution would probably request the Constitutional Court to check the constitutionality of the referendum questions proposed by the Bridge party in its two referendum petitions.
"I personally believe that the Committee on the Constitution will send a request to the plenary session of the Constitutional Court to assess whether the questions are in line with the Constitution," Jandroković told reporters and confirmed that observers would be included in counting the signatures.
Earlier in the day, the Bridge's delegation said they had collected 410,533 signatures in favour of the proposal to have decisions related to COVID-19 adopted in the parliament by two thirds and 409,219 signatures in favour of abolishing the COVID certificate mandate, after boxes with signatures had been brought to the national legislature.
The minimum required number of valid signatures is 368,867.
Monitors will certainly be involved
"Monitors will certainly be involved so that not one side can question the relevance of any decision related to counting signatures," he said.
Jandroković did not wish to forecast whether COVID certificates might be abolished which would mean that the Bridge referendum would be unnecessary.
If we could be certain that the Omicron pandemic is ending then we could abolish not only COVID certificates but all other measures we have been living with over the past two years, said Jandroković.
He explained the procedure now that Bridge has submitted the signatures collected.
The Constitution committee is due ask the government to determine the validity of the signatures.
When the government has done that it will inform the Sabor if a sufficient number of signatures have been collected to call a referendum or not.
The committee can request the plenary to ask the Constitutional Court to check whether the referendum question is in line with the Constitution, which would then have 30 days to respond. If everything is in order the Sabor will call for the referendum.