25 May 2009 - Organised by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Zagreb, the Conference marking the 60th anniversary of the German Basic Law (the Constitution) was held in Zagreb today. Professor Udo Steiner, former judge of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany spoke about the German Basic Law and the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, while Professor Branko Smerdel from the Zagreb Faculty of Law reflected on the massages stemming from the German Basic Law. Dr. Eckhart Hien, former President of the Federal Administrative Court of Germany outlined the experiences of the Croatian-German bilateral project related to development of Croatian administrative judicature. Professor Jasna Omejec, President of the Constitutional Court also addressed the participants and talked about the importance of the jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court to the Croatian constitutional judicature. In her speech she stressed, among other things, that the German jurisprudence is considered a permanent and inexhaustible source of principles, general rules and methods of the constitutional interpretation in the proceedings for the protection of fundamental human rights and for the preservation of the objective national constitutional legal order, and as such is a strong impulse and a guideline for other national constitutional courts including the Croatian Court.
