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In a statement for one regional TV channel, a current Croatian representative in the European Parliament and a candidate in the upcoming European elections Mrs Biljana Borzan, said that two thirds of laws that are voted for in the European Parliament are being implemented in the Croatian legislation. The statement raised the question what the source is for Mrs Borzan’s statement and to what extent this is or is not true. We examined existing studies of EU legislation, documents of the European Parliament, contacted the Croatian Parliament, talked to Croatian experts on European legislation and contacted Mrs Borzan’s office in order to verify the fact in this statement. We found that the number in this statement is mostly true. However, the exact number is difficult to confirm. This numerical assessment is predominantly based on estimations of experts who emphasized that it would be very demanding for any researcher to find out the exact number. Also, the main source that Mrs Borzan mentioned in our correspondence was an analysis by a British eurosceptic campaign group on the basis of which she made a correlation between the UK and Croatia. Mrs Biljana Borzan, a current Croatian member of the European Parliament, who is also a candidate in the upcoming European elections, said for a regional TV network N1: I hope that more Croatians will vote in the upcoming elections because two thirds (2/3) of the laws that are having an effect on Croatia’s legislation are being implemented by European Parliament. For that reason I hope that interest in the upcoming elections will be higher than 25 percent in the previous elections. The focus of our research is to find if the 2/3 of the European laws are being implemented in the Croatian legislation. The European legislation possesses the power or the ability by which the European Union implements its regulations into the legislation system of its members. While in the process of joining in the European Union, countries must sign a contract in which they allow the implementation of European laws in their legislation system. Regulations bring changes in different aspects of citizens’ lives and for that reason it is very important to consider this topic as a relevant one. First we contacted Mrs Biljana Borzan via email to check the source for her statement. Mrs Borzan quickly justifies it by a research conducted by so-called Business for Britain, a eurosceptic campaign group in the UK founded in year 2013 by five hundred UK business leaders. This study is unavailable in the pdf at the time of our research but its main points are available on the website Talk Business. According to the analysis, EU rules account for 65 percent of UK laws. This research contains the same statistics Mrs Borzan stated, but the difference is that the research is based on the United Kingdom’s legislation and not on Croatia’s legislation. When asked why she thinks findings on British legislation could apply to Croatia, she says in her email: This research is relevant for the Republic of Croatia given that these two members of the European Union are not a part of the Eurozone or the Schengen zone." Each country has its own legislation system regulated by their own criteria and each system is differently conceived. It is difficult to assess to what extent the legislation system of the United Kingdom and Croatia legislation system is comparable because the implementation of European regulations is different for every national legislative system. It is important to note that these statistics were often misused by the Eurosceptics in the UK to prove that decisions about their citizens are made elsewhere
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