Transformation of the Croatian Legal Aid System: From Normative to Functional Insufficiency

The establishment of the Croatian legal aid system in civil matters was a consequence of Croatia’s accession to the European Union. Lack of comprehensive assessment of citizens’ needs and lack of systematic research on the costs of legal aid resulted in an insufficient normative background. Uncertainty and the lack of flexibility of some of the provisions of the Legal Aid Act effectively precluded many citizens from obtaining legal aid. Matters were such that the Croatian Constitutional Court intervened by abolishing some of the Act’s key provisions. The new Legal Aid Act was supposed to cope with all the identified problems. Simplification and increased flexibility of threshold rules, in combination with policy changes with regard to financing of legal aid providers, promised a greater possibility to access justice in civil matters. This contribution assesses the extent to which the normative transformation of the Croatian legal aid system was indeed successful in achieving the goals of recent reform attempts.